Half of Coca-Cola European Partners' bottles to be made from recycled plastic

Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) has announced that all plastic bottles across all its core brands made in Great Britain are now made with 50% recycled plastic (rPET).

The business will now use 21,000 tonnes of recycled plastic per year, increasing its usage of rPET by 25%. The company aims to continue creating more sustainable packaging options.

Stephen Moorhouse, general manager at CCEP, Great Britain, said: “This milestone marks an important step towards our ambition across Western Europe to remove all non-recycled plastic from our bottles.

“One of the key challenges the industry currently faces is that there isn’t enough food-grade 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, and stop it ending up as waste.”

In Great Britain Coca-Cola has worked closely with the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) for 20 years, sharing a vision to minimise waste and promote resource efficiency and circularity, from jointly investing in Recycle Zone on-the-go recycling facilities in 2008, through to being one of the founder members of UK Plastics Pact.

Helen Bird, strategic engagement manager at WRAP, commented: “It takes 75% less energy to make a plastic bottle from recycled plastic compared with using virgin material, and it’s always important to remember that using recycled content in the manufacture of new products and packaging is the whole point of recycling. Not only does it mean that less new plastic is being used, it also ensures that it is being kept in the packaging recycling system and out of the environment.

"We are seeing momentum building on the use of recycled content in plastic packaging and this announcement by Coca-Cola, one of our founding UK Plastics Pact members, is good news for the environment and good news for industry.”