SUSTAINABILITY
RECYCLE WEEK SOFT DRINKS PRODUCERS
SOFT DRINKS GIANTS EMBRACE RECYCLE WEEK SOME OF THE UK’S BIGGEST SOFT DRINKS PRODUCERS HAVE CELEBRATED RECYCLE WEEK BY
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UNVEILING SOME NEWS AND INNOVATIONS GEARED TOWARDS A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE.
f you weren’t aware already, it’s ‘Recycle Week’, an annual festival organised by recycling campaign Recycle Now. Unsurprisingly, many of the UK’s biggest soft drinks brands have chosen this week to unveil their latest news and innovations to drive consumer and retailer interest in reducing our collective impact on the planet.
COCA-COLA EUROPEAN PARTNERS: SUSTAINABILITY MILESTONE REACHED Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP), in partnership with Coca-Cola Great Britain, announced earlier this week that all plastic bottles across all its core brands made in Great Britain are now made with 50% recycled plastic (rPET). The move means Coca-Cola in Great Britain is now using over 21,000 tonnes of recycled plastic per year and rPET now accounts for 50% of
all plastic used in bottles across the company’s core range made in Great Britain. With this change Coca-Cola increases its rPET usage by a further 25% marking another major step on the journey towards the company’s ambition to help create more sustainable packaging options where all plastic used in bottles comes from recycled or renewable sources. All of Coca-Cola’s bottles have been 100% recyclable for many years.
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To announce the step forward and the increase in recycled material, bottles will carry new labels notifying consumers of the change and encouraging them to recycle the bottle. The move comes as part of Coke’s long-term investment in the UK’s circular economy, since helping to establish the UK’s biggest bottle-to-bottle plastic reprocessing facility in Lincolnshire in 2012 which reprocesses bottles collected from households across the UK. Stephen Moorhouse, General Manager at Coca-Cola European Partners Great Britain, said: “One of the key challenges the industry currently faces is that there isn’t enough foodgrade recycled plastic locally available in the UK to switch to 100% rPET across our entire range. There needs to be more high-quality recycled plastic produced, so it’s vital to make sure we collect more bottles in an efficient way,
