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Coca-Cola European Partners has announced that it will transition to bottles made from 100% recycled PET (rPET) from the end of the year in the Netherlands and Norway.
Announced today (September 7), Coca-Cola European Partners stated that in the Netherlands it will transition all small plastic bottles produced locally to 100% rPET starting in October 2020 and large plastic bottles will follow early by 2021. Coca-Cola claims this transition will eliminate 10,000 tons of new virgin plastic and reduce the carbon footprint of its plastic bottles by 21% annually.
Norway will transition to 100% rPET for all locally produced plastic bottles in early 2021, reducing virgin plastic consumption by 4,300 tonnes per year and the bottle’s carbon footprint by 28%.
The transition to 100% rPET in these two markets follows Coca-Cola European Partners’ announcement in December 2019 that Sweden would be the first market to move to 100% rPET in its locally produced plastic bottles.
Coca-Cola European Partners aims to transition its entire portfolio of locally produced products in Western Europe to 100% rPET by 2030, which it expects will remove more than 200,000 tonnes of virgin plastic from its packaging portfolio each year.
As part of their joint Sustainability Action Plan, ‘This is Ahead’, Coca-Cola European Partners and The Coca-Cola Company in Western Europe have committed that by 2025, Coca-Cola will: collect one can or bottle for every one that sells and will ensure that all of its packaging is 100% recyclable and by 2023 will ensure that at least 50% of the content of its PET bottles comes from recycled content.
Coca-Cola’s European partners also expressed support for Deposit Return Schemes (DRS) in their vision of a circular business model, saying they were essential to boost plastic bottle collection rates and reduce pollution.
Commenting on the announcement from the Netherlands and Norway, Joe Franses, Vice President of Sustainability at Coca-Cola European Partners, said: “Today’s announcement that Coca-Cola European Partners Netherlands and Coca-Cola European Partners Norway are doing the moving to 100% rPET brands a vital step forward in our journey to eliminate the new virgin oil-based plastic from all of our plastic bottles within a decade. Crucially, this announcement provides a compelling case for the role deposit refund schemes (DRS) can play in creating local circular economies for beverage packaging. Markets with well-designed DRS, such as Sweden, the Netherlands, and Norway, not only have high collection rates, but they also have the ability to collect higher quality material with less contamination.
“Coca-Cola in Western Europe is a strong supporter of the implementation of well-designed deposit return schemes throughout Europe, recognizing the role they can play as part of the local closed-loop recycling system. We are also committed to supporting innovative packaging and recycling technologies to help us reach our goal of 50% recycled content in all our plastic bottles by 2023. “
Despite Coca-Cola European Partners’ stated commitment to use recycled plastic in its locally produced bottles, it has previously been criticized for its definition of single use, with a Coca-Cola advertising campaign executed in 2019 during the Action Program. of Waste and Resources. (WRAP) Recycle Week, suggesting that Coca-Cola bottles were single-use only if not recycled.
The ocean pollution charity City to Sea filed a complaint with the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) in December 2019 saying the ad campaign was misleading, but the ASA ruled that Coca-Cola did not violate its advertising code.
This conclusion was criticized by a group of NGOs, saying that the ruling undermined widely accepted definitions of single use, especially considering that Recycle Now, which is managed by WRAP, explains that a product can be “ single use ” regardless of if recycled, defining single-use plastics that are “used only once before being disposed of or recycled.”
