Coca-Cola

Joe Franses of Coca-Cola European Partners chats to Tim Sykes about the different approaches the iconic brand is taking to eliminate packaging waste and reduce environmental footprints.

COCA-COLA TALKS SUSTAINABILITY

TS: Tell us a bit about your role – what are your key responsibilities?

JF: A couple of words about Coca-Cola European Partners first of all. We are the world’s largest Coca-Cola bottler by revenue – we operate across 30 markets in western and northern Europe and employ 24,000 people across our business. We manufacture products for about 300 million consumers across our markets and also serve about a million outlets.

My role is to ensure that our sustainability strategy is headed in the right direction. We work very closely with the Coca-Cola Company in western Europe and we have a joint sustainability action plan called ‘This Is Forward’, which includes targets on water, calorie reduction, science-based carbon reduction and packaging.

TS: Let’s home in on your sustainability targets in relation to packaging – can you explain the Coca-Cola Company’s key goals and how they relate to Coca-Cola European Partners’ own strategies and targets?

JF: The good news is that the Coca-Cola Company’s global ‘World Without Waste’ strategy is very closely aligned to our own. And, when you look at the targets, we are focusing on design, recyclability, collection and using recycled content. So, we’re really looking at a very close alignment between the global Coca-Cola strategy and our strategy in western Europe.

I think there are some differences, one of these is that we have a slightly more aggressive timeline in western Europe. For example, we want to ensure that 50% of the plastic we use will be recycled plastic. We said we were going to do this by 2025, but we’ve actually just brought this forward to 2023. The target is slightly longer at a global level – 2030.

TS: Several packaging-related announcements from Coca-Cola have caught our attention in recent times, and these shed some light on how the targets you’re talking about are actually being pursued in real terms. Can you tell us about KeelClip, the paper-based aggregator for multipacks?

JF: For context, one of the things we said we’d do earlier in the year was publish our packaging footprint. We’ve done this – it can be found on our website. This report shows that we put 23 billion packs onto the marketplace each year, four billion of which are actually refillable bottles – both glass and a small amount of refillable PET.

We reckon that about a third of all the packs we put onto the marketplace are single-use plastic bottles. We also have cans, glass bottles, and refillable glass bottles, as well as 2.2 billion 500ml servings-worth of product dispensed through fountains and dispenser equipment. All of this means that our packaging footprint is quite varied.

Now, when you look across that packaging footprint, we’ve said that we’re willing to ensure that everything we put on to the marketplace is recyclable. At the moment, we believe that about 98% of our primary packaging is recyclable – there’s a small number of packs that are not. By the way, when I talk about recyclability, I’m not just talking about technical

recyclability – I’m also talking about recyclability in practice. This means being compatible with local collection and sorting systems.

Regarding KeelClip, one of the commitments that we made earlier in the year was to begin to remove all unnecessary or hard-to-recycle packaging from our portfolio. For example, we found that a very small number of our sleeves and labels that we were using were hindering the recyclability of our primary packs, so we fixed that issue. We also looked at the shrink wrap that we were using. In many of our markets, shrink isn’t collected for recycling and there’s no recycling route for many of our consumers. We announced earlier in the year that we would begin to move away from plastic shrink to 100% recyclable and sustainably sourced board for all our multipack cans. You’re already seeing that in place in some markets and we’re going to begin to do that across all our markets from 2020.

This would help us to remove over 4000 tonnes of plastic from our supply chain. It’s critical that we use sustainably sourced board. KeelClip is one of those solutions, and we’re going to be the first to market in the non-alcoholic ready-to-drink sector to use it. Initially, we’ll be using it on our 250ml multipack cans in the Netherlands – more markets to follow.

TS: Another announcement that we saw recently was the adoption of 100% recycled PET in the Swedish market. Obviously, this is also in the context of cutting out unrecycled plastic waste, as an important part of recyclability is making sure there’s a market for the recycled materials in the end. Is that how you see this strategy?

Joe Franses JF: You’ve seen the Circular Economy Strategy from the EU Commission and the Single Use Plastic Directive really begin to target some of those forms of plastic that are hard to recycle, and for which there is no collection rate.

We believe that, in the long term, there is a place for plastic beverage bottles – but that place is within a circular economy. It’s about ensuring that those bottles and that material has some value, so they don’t end up as litter, they’re not incinerated and – worst of all – they don’t end up polluting our waterways and oceans. We’re the first to recognize as a business that we have a long way to go before our plastic packaging is collected at very high rates and has high levels of recycled content.

We’ve also begun to use 100% recycled PET in some of our brands. Earlier in the year we announced that our Honest, Chaudfontaine and Smartwater brands were moving to 100% rPET.

Very recently we also announced that Fuse Tea in the Netherlands and our BonAqua brand in Norway were also going to come to market in 100% rPET. In Sweden we’re going one step further still – all our plastic bottles across all our brands will move to 100% rPET. We believe that will be the first market in the world to achieve this.

Sweden has a deposit return scheme in place, meaning that very high percentages of our plastic bottles return and can be used again in a circular economy. The pledge that we’ve made around 100% rPET essentially means we are making the commitment to use that material again in our bottles. That is a truly circular future-fit supply chain, and it’s a once-in-ageneration opportunity to make that kind of change in other markets that we’re really determined to do.

This, by the way, connects back to our other headline target, which is to collect a bottle or a can for every one we sell – or 100% collection, as we refer to it.

TS: You referenced climate commitments and carbon footprint in relation to recycled PET. I was curious as to how the respective carbon and packaging waste commitments feed into the choice of packaging material you make in any particular product category or context?

JF: We’ve been involved in looking at the carbon impact of our packaging for well over a decade. We were one of the first businesses to work with the Carbon Trust, looking at the carbon footprint of individual packages and pack choices we make. We’ve also had science-based carbon reduction targets in place for a long time – we’ve got a target to halve, in absolute terms, greenhouse gas emissions from our core business operations and to cut carbon emissions by 35% across our entire value chain. By the way, packaging accounts for 40% of our value chain carbon footprint, far less than manufacturing, transportation or chilling.

What we’ve learned from all of this work is that there is no one perfect “most sustainable” pack. Every pack plays its part and we’ve got to find the most sustainable ways for people to enjoy drinks. For plastic, that means making sure that it’s part of a circular closed-loop economy, but it’s also about making sure that we do this in line with what our planet requires and what our long-term carbon reduction trajectory looks like.

TS: I suppose the facts on the ground are continually changing in terms of the recycling landscape and the footprints of individual packaging materials etc. In what ways do you monitor and respond to these changing situations?

JF: We see a wide variety of collection rates across our markets. If we take a market like Great Britain, we believe that around 59% of plastic bottles already return through the curbside collection scheme. It’s a similar percentage in France, but lower than Spain and lower still than Belgium. But we see that number is around 90% in markets like Germany, Norway and Sweden that have deposit return schemes in place.

We’ve taken learnings from all the different types of collection infrastructures that exist across our markets and the answer is simple: the markets that have well-designed deposit return schemes in place have the highest collection rates. That’s exactly why we are now actively supporting the introduction of well-designed deposit returns schemes, because it drives collection, it drives the circular economy and, critically, it enables the highest possible quality feedstock to come through those systems that we can then use as recycled PET back in our bottles.

We also want to stay well ahead of European legislation. You’ll be aware that the EU Commission has put in place tough collection targets – 77% collection for beverage packaging by 2025, 90% collection by 2029. At the moment, we estimate – looking at all the numbers we get back from our markets – that somewhere in the region of about 74% of our packaging is already collected through local and national schemes. We’ve just got to do more.

TS: You mentioned your support for deposit return systems. One of the criticisms that has been made of that model is that it can siphon off the most valuable and easy-to-recycle materials, such as PET, thereby making curbside recycling less economically viable with a negative impact on recycling rates of other materials. Does that strike you as a concern?

JF: When I go out and speak to NGOs they are rightly concerned about the fact that too much plastic packaging, including our packs, is ending up where it shouldn’t – either as litter or being incinerated or in our waterways. So, we’re focused on putting a workable solution in place for our packaging – both plastic bottles and aluminium cans. For us, that means a well-designed deposit return scheme, which is why we’re strongly advocating for those schemes. I know that there is interest in this waste from waste management contractors. I think there’s a lot of value in waste, irrespective of whether PET bottles or cans are directed through a deposit returns scheme.

TS: There are other areas where Coca-Cola has made interesting moves in the last year or so around packaging sustainability. First of all, the refillable bottles space – there was the really innovative project with the University of Reading in the UK with ‘Freestyle’ machines, and reusable bottles getting fitted with smart chips. Is this something you see as a significant part of your ecosystem of options?

JF: In the early days, Coca-Cola was only dispensed via fountains, so creating packaging-free solutions is part of what we do. The Reading trial was interesting – we’ve learned a lot from it and we’ve also got Freestyle equipment that was used at the universities of Reading and Amsterdam that enables us to dispense over 120 different flavours. It also enables the consumer to bring their own bottle to fill, or to take one of the RFID-enabled bottles that we put in place at the University of Reading. So, we’re trialling and testing those schemes.

We’re also looking at other refillable options. We’ve been partnering with Carrefour and TerraCycle’s Loop scheme in France to create a new circular shopping platform that’s really allowing consumers to have our iconic glass bottles, along with many other different brands, delivered directly to home. The empty bottles are then packaged up, collected, cleaned, refilled and reused.

TS: A final area of innovation I wanted to talk about was the PlantBottle with bioplastic content. Is this something that’s still a major part of your agenda?

JF: PlantBottle has been really successfully used across multiple markets and in a number of our brands for a few years. It’s 100% recyclable and essentially enables PET to be partially made out of plant-based material. At the moment, we’re focusing very much on recycled PET, but we wouldn’t count out using more plant-based material in the future.

TS: I’d like to hear about the kinds of collaborations that you require, both across the industry and bilaterally with your suppliers in order to drive the changes that you need to see.

JF: We’re very clear that none of this agenda happens without our suppliers. For example KeelClip was brought to us by one of our suppliers. One thing we’re really excited about is emerging ‘enhanced recycling technologies’ which can turn hard-to-recycle plastics into food-grade recycled PET.

“We believe that, in the long term, there is a place for plastic beverage bottles – but that place is within a circular economy. It’s about ensuring that those bottles and that material has some value, so they don’t end up as litter, they’re not incinerated and – worst of all – they don’t end up polluting our waterways and oceans.”

We’ve got many strong strategic relationships with PET suppliers in the traditional mechanical space.

We’ve got a long-term supply agreement in place with Loop Industries. The Coca-Cola company has also been supporting the industrial scale-up of the Ioniqa-owned enhanced recycling plant in the Netherlands. Working with partners – as well as with one of our long-term PET suppliers, Indorama – has not only enabled us to transition some of our brands to 100% rPET, it has also helped us to make a prototype bottle made partially out of ocean plastics that have been recovered through one of our Circular Seas programmes called Mares Circulares in Spain. It will really help us recycle plastic back into food-grade PET in the long-term and, critically, help us to avoid more and more virgin plastic.

Whenever you use recycled PET, you avoid the use of virgin plastic. Even our transition to 100% rPET on our Chaudfontaine, Honest, and Smartwater brands has allowed us to avoid 9000 tonnes of virgin plastic. But, let’s also remember that it’s not only about innovation – there are some other really simple things we can do.

Another example: in the last year we moved Sprite from a green PET bottle to a clear PET bottle. Now, why did we do that? It wasn’t because green PET isn’t recyclable, but that clear PET is recyclable bottle to bottle. Green has been integral to Sprite for many years, but by making a relatively simple change all of that clear material can be recycled and used again in Sprite and other bottles. As the advertising campaign says: ‘clear is the new green’.

TS: And has the consumer response to this been positive? Obviously, you need to take the consumer with you, and this can only be environmentally sustainable if it’s financially sustainable.

JF: Our consumers want us to be doing the right thing. We’re also beginning to use our brands to really encourage and inspire people to recycle more. We’ve recently launched a campaign in Great Britain called ‘Round in Circles’. We also held a campaign over the summer in Belgium and the Netherlands where we were conveying the message to consumers that they shouldn’t buy our products if they didn’t want to help us on the recycling journey.

I think our brands have a really important role to play – they all now carry a ‘please recycle me’ message on their closures. I think there are many things that our brands can do to ensure that consumers understand what we’re doing and why we’re making these changes. n