Southampton launches first city-centre Recycle Zone

The ‘Recycle Zone' partnership is intended to make it easier for residents to recycle bottles and cans when they are out and about and represents the latest effort by the beverage giant to promote recycling.

There are 15 stainless steel bins for recycling and 35 black ones that are dual – one side for recycling and the other for general litter.

Coca-Cola has chosen Southampton as the first local authority to host a Recycle Zone in a city centre. This builds on the work its sister company, Coca Cola Enterprises, has been leading across the country over the past year in partnership with Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to launch Recycle Zones in shopping centres, theme parks, transport hubs and universities (see letsrecycle.com story).

There are currently 21 other live Recycle Zones which to date have collected some 20 tonnes of material for recycling, with a further 59 Zones planned by the end of 2011.

Southampton city centre will have 15 double stainless steel bins and liveried with the phrase ‘Keep it Going. Recycle' with a further 35 dual recycling and litter bins located in parks and other central locations in the city.

All the bins will be provided by Coca Cola and will be branded with Southampton city council and Coca-Cola logos alongside information designed to inspire people to recycle more often.

Coca Cola has also provided Southampton's waste management team with a branded collection vehicle to help with the specific collection and maintenance of the bins and is providing media support for two years, in the form of an advertising campaign using outdoor, print and digital media all being used to encourage Southampton's residents and visitors to make use of the facilities.

Campaign 

The launch comes a day after Coca Cola yesterday (September 21) launched a national ‘Keep it Going. Recycle' campaign to show how recycling drinks bottles and cans can make a major difference to the environment by cutting the carbon footprint of a packaged drink by over a half.

The campaign continues the work Coca-Cola undertook last year in partnership with the Carbon Trust which showed that packaging accounts for the largest proportion of a drink's carbon footprint, underlining the importance for the business of using more recycled material in bottles and cans and of helping to increase consumer recycling levels.

Both initiatives are the latest undertaken by Coca Cola to reduce its impact on the environment. Despite the difficult economic conditions, research indicates that consumers are still concerned about ‘green' issues, with recycling being the most commonly practised ‘green' lifestyle behaviour.

All aluminium cans used by the beverage company already contain around 50% recycled content and their weight has been reduced steadily over time. The company's glass bottles contain around 40% recycled glass and the ambition is that all their plastic (PET) bottles contain at least 25% recycled PET by the end of 2012 – in order to achieve this it claims there needs to be “much more” readily available, good quality recycled plastic in the waste stream.

As a result Southampton city council and Coca-Cola are working to make it as easy as possible for people to recycle more often within the city. By boosting consumer recycling levels, Coca-Cola will at the same time be increasing the supply of local recyclate and be able to increase the amount of recycled content in its bottles and cans.

Sanjay Guha, president of Coca-Cola Great Britain, said: “We're delighted to be launching our first city centre Recycle Zone in Southampton today. Cans and bottles are made of precious materials which can be used again and again through recycling. We're committed to reducing our impact on the environment: as well as putting our own house in order we must help our consumers to do more – Recycle Zones are a great way of doing that.

“We believe that increasing recycling levels is one of the most effective steps we can take to bring us closer to our goal of operating sustainably. Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do – without sustainable, healthy communities we won't have a sustainable business.”

Councillor Matthew Dean, Southampton city council's cabinet member for environment and transport, said: “This is a fantastic value for money initiative, which will hopefully get more people recycling in the city.We know that in Southampton we need to do all we can to get people to recycle and, particularly, to make it easy for people to recycle. And by working with Coca-Cola we can go a long way to achieving this.”