Coca-Cola European Partners announce sustainable packaging update

From launching a dedicated sustainable packaging strategy for Great Britain a year ago, Coco-Cola European Partners (CCEP) and Coco-Cola Great Britain (CCGB) is now reinforcing its commitments by sharing progress highlights and revealing its vision for a well-designed Deposit Return Scheme.

The company says it will continue to innovate to ensure its packaging is as sustainable as possible.

All large PET bottles, including Coco-Cola, Sprite and Fanta, will start to move to 40 per cent rPET this year which is part of the development to transitioning the whole PET portfolio to 50 per cent rPET.

CCEP and CCGB is a founding member of WRAP’S UK Plastic Pact, a collaborative industry initiative supporting the circular economy.

The partners are part of a signatory for Operation Clean Sweep, which takes actions to prevent plastic nurdles entering the environment and is a national sponsor of Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean 2018, the nation’s biggest ever single clean-up event.

To encourage its consumers to recycle it is adding recycling messages on TV and digital advertising end-frames, as well as replacing the branding on its bottle closure with recycling messages.

The closures are already on Coco-Cola and Coco-Cola Zero sugar 500ml bottles and will appear across the rest of the Coco-Cola portfolio by the end of 2018.

CCEP and CCGB have set out their vision for a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) in GB, with 11 principles based on discussions with suppliers and customers, industry and recyclers.

“Initiatives like our investment in bottle recycling in GB and our commitment to keep increasing recycled material in our packs are key to ensuring more packaging is collected and reprocessed,” said Nick Brown, Head of Sustainability at CCEP.

“We believe we are at a crucial moment in time, with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create real change for packaging recovery systems in GB.”

The Packaging Strategy forms part of a wider Sustainability Action Plan launched in November 2017 by Coco-Cola and CCEP for the whole of Western Europe.