Sustainable Packaging

Packaging plays an essential role for our business in meeting consumer refreshment needs and preventing waste by protecting our products during delivery and use. We are actively working to prevent all forms of waste over the life of our packaging.

Our Position

• Packaging plays an essential role for our business in meeting consumer refreshment needs and preventing waste by protecting our products during delivery and use. We are actively working to prevent all forms of waste over the life of our packaging.

Our Strategies

• We are taking steps to advance our sustainable packaging strategy in three areas:
  
  
  • Light weighting – We use the least amount of natural resources required in the design of our packages to protect and transport our beverages safely to consumers. Our global goal is to further improve packaging material efficiency per liter of product by seven percent by 2015 , compared with a 2008 baseline.
    
    
  • Recycled Content and Renewable Material Use – Coca‑Cola has been the market leader in advancing breakthrough technologies for increasing recycled content and renewable material use. Since introducing the first-ever beverage bottle with recycled content material in 1991, we have invested in building state-of-the-art bottle-to-bottle recycling facilities around the world to increase the availability of food quality recycled material. In 2009, we introduced the world to our breakthrough PlantBottle™ technology, the only plastic today that is made with renewable resources, is fully recyclable and meets the quality requirements of our core beverages. Our goal is to source 25 percent of our PET plastic from recycled or renewable material by 2015.
    
    
  • Packaging is the largest contributor to Coca‑Cola’s potential carbon emissions, so efforts such as light weighting, recycled content and PlantBottle™ technology will be captured within the overall 25 percent carbon reduction goal for 2020.

Our Progress

• Our system-wide productivity program has avoided the use of 125,000 metric tons of primary packaging, resulting in an estimated cost savings of approximately $200 million in the past two years.
  
  
  • Since originally introduced, we have reduced the weight of our eight ounce glass bottle by more than 50 percent, our 12 ounce aluminum can by more than 30 percent and our 20 ounce PET plastic bottle by more than 25 percent.
     
• Coca‑Cola has invested directly in six plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling plants.
  
  
• Since introducing our innovative PlantBottle™ package in 2009, we have distributed more than 15 billion PlantBottle™ packages in more than 25 countries worldwide, including the United States, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa. By 2020, we plan to use PlantBottle™ packaging for all of our PET plastic bottles.
  
  
• PlantBottle™ packaging eliminates carbon emissions and reduces dependence on fossil-based materials compared with traditional PET plastic. Our use of PlantBottle™ packaging since launch has eliminated the equivalent of more than 140,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from our PET plastic bottles. This is the equivalent of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from burning more than 328,000 barrels of oil.
  
  
• In South Africa, more than 50% of our beverage volume today is delivered in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles. They are 100% recyclable, and the added value provided by lightweight, shatter-resistant and resealable plastic bottles has proven immensely popular with consumers around the world.

Coca‑Cola South Africa (CCSA) was a founding member of the PET Recycling Company (PETCO) in 2000. PETCO aims to minimise the environmental impact of post-consumer PET on the South African landscape by achieving sustainable growth in PET plastic recycling, supporting existing and encouraging new PET collection and recycling networks, and; promoting consumer education and awareness programmes.

CCSA is a founding member of the ‘Collect- a- Can’ initiative, which has resulted in over 75% recovery rate of aluminium cans—one of the highest beverage can recovery rates in the world.

• In 2012, we launched the EKOCYCLE™ brand initiative with global music artist will.i.am. EKOCYCLE™ was developed to educate consumers about everyday recycling choices and empower their purchasing decisions. The initiative supports recycling by helping consumers recognize that items they consider waste today may be part of a lifestyle product they can use tomorrow. With the help of the fashion industry’s hottest trendsetters, materials such as plastic bottles and aluminum cans are used to create fashion-forward EKOCYCLE™ products. EKOCYCLE™ has launched brand partnerships with Beats by Dr. Dre®, New Era®, Levi's® brand, MCM, RVCA and Case-Mate®.
  
  
• In July 2013, we announced a 2020 goal to reach a 75 percent recovery rate of bottles and cans in developed markets. In developing markets we will continue to work with municipal recycling programs, through industry recovery efforts, as well as direct recovery initiatives. We recognize that to really improve recovery we must work together with industry and consumers.