Coke concerned as it aims to crack recycling puzzle

Soft drinks giant Coca-Cola has added its support to the concerns of retailers that the varied nature of local authority recycling schemes is hampering the collection of materials at the local level.

Announcing a six month study into recycling behaviours within households, Simon Baldry, managing director of Coca-Cola Enterprises (Europe) expressed concern that promoting recycling to householders is always going to be difficult because of the differences at local level. We have spoken to retailers about this and there is a lack of consistency.

And, the company has revealed that through a partnership with ECO Plastics, it has found that the amount of PET bottles in the bales from municipal sources has reduced.

Mr Baldry was speaking yesterday (May 20) at the launch of the Coca-Cola Recycling for the Future household study at the companys new environmentally-friendly offices in Uxbridge, West London. The building has a high BREEAM certificate value and has been developed using eco-friendly principles.

Zero waste

Explaining that the company recognised the need to reduce its impact on the environment, Mr Baldry said that CCE was looking at how to drive a zero waste environment in our business. We are starting to realise we have to go beyond the four walls of our business.
He highlighted areas where significant progress had been made including water stewardship, health and carbon impacts.

The soft drinks firm hopes to encourage plastic bottle recycling

On water, he said: We have reduced the amount of water used for making one litre of product down to 1.3 litres used to make one litre. This is about the best in the Coca-Cola world. On health and wellbeing, we are committed to a 5% reduction in calories per litre by 2014.

The importance of bottle recycling to Coca-Cola was signalled by Mr Baldry who pointed to the companys involvement with the ECO Plastics plastic bottle shredding plant in Hemswell, Lincolnshire as changing the game. And, the company has said that the loss of plastic bottles to the waste stream in the home rather than recycling, in addition to creating unnecessary waste, also results in a critical shortage in the supply of locally available high-quality recycled PET for manufacturers.

Continuum

CCE has invested in the sites Continuum process. Involvement in the process gives Coke access to the PET flake produced and the company is keen to see volumes increase there in light of the general demand for secondary raw materials.

At ECOPlastics, said Mr Baldry, Coke has investment 5 million with a 10-year commitment. This is a one year anniversary and we will have processed over 500 million bottles through the Continuum facility. I think that is real leadership, how we are going to change the game. And a similar project is underway in France at the Artenius PET Recycling (APPE) facility in Beaune.

A Coke spokesman explained that: One of the reasons we partnered with ECO Plastics is their industry leading ability to take in a range of mixed plastics and sort them to the standard needed to make food grade rPET to the standards we require. It is true over the last few years that as mixed plastics collections have increased the amount of PET in the bales from UK local authorities has reduced, and we are working with policy makers to improve the quality of collected materials.

Looking ahead, Mr Baldry said that the company had taken a commitment by 2020 to reduce the carbon impact of Coke that you have in your hand by one third. A clear way is to ensure that this is not thrown away and is recycled.

Coke has found a ‘value action gap, 75% say they recycle, we know the reality is different in terms of recycling rates

Joe Franses, CCE

Two projects

Joe Franses, director for corporate responsibility & sustainability at CCE told the audience that the company was working on two projects.

One is Recycling for the Future which involves a project withExeter University. This involves six months of research working with 10 households in the London borough of Sutton and a similar number in Normandy, France to determine why people dont always recycle when they say they actually do.

A separate project in Milton Keynes, with the support of the council and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will look at the impact of using pledges to encourage recycling.

The sheer scale of the recycling potential for Coke was given by Mr Franses who said that the company which operates in Western Europe sells 12 billion bottles and cans each year across all our geographies. The pack accounts for 48% of the carbon footprint of the drink in your hand and recycling is fundamental to bring the footprint down.

Cokes preliminary research said Mr Franses, had found a value action gap, 75% say they recycle, we know the reality is different in terms of recycling rates. The two projects will look at what they do and they say they do.

And, he suggested that the reason for not recycling may be to do with everyday living.
Phase two of the project will look at how CCE can take the results and work on what to do to encourage people to recycle more.

On the go

Mr Franses also indicated that the company would be paying more attention to recycling in the home rather than on the go because of the much larger proportion of bottles used in the home as well as being taken home after use on the go.

He explained: Our big focus will on ‘at home’ as the fast majority of our packs are disposed of at home. We have supported ‘on the g’o but the ‘at home’ environment is where most of our packs are disposed of.