SUSTAINABILITY
they are perfectly placed to engage people in environmental issues and encourage positive behaviour, such as making sure packaging is properly recycled.
As part of our ongoing efforts to engage communities at a grassroots level, we support Keep Britain Tidy’s annual Great British Spring Clean campaign. The impact of the coronavirus outbreak meant the Great British Spring Clean was postponed, but we didn’t let it stop our efforts as our colleagues, customers and communities across the country came out in force to take part in the Great British September Clean.
“The coronavirus pandemic has presented us with a unique opportunity to press the refresh button on our approach to sustainability.”
The event was done differently in 2020, with socially-distanced litter picks taking place all over the country to ensure they were Covid-safe, but still saw volunteers working collectively to make a real difference to their local communities. The initiative isn’t simply about getting people to pick up litter and improve public places, it’s about changing behaviour for the better and inspiring everyone to take care of the environment. By helping to make small changes at a local level, we can all collectively make a huge difference in the long-term.
Playing our part
It is important to ensure that we are leading the way, setting an example for others to follow. At Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) we’re committed to finding the most sustainable ways for more people to enjoy our soft drinks and have set ourselves a target to halve our direct carbon emissions by 2025.
We also consider a broad range of sustainability metrics when developing our packaging strategy, taking into account all of our products and packaging formats. This year we have moved all of our bottles to 50% recycled content, and are also replacing the plastic films on our multipacks with easy-to-recycle board as part of our ongoing commitment to eliminating problematic and unnecessary plastic packaging.
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Meanwhile, we have reduced the amount of glass used in our iconic Coca-Cola glass bottles by one-fifth in recent years, while we invested in a new production line for our bag-in-box products to increase capacity of this more sustainable option for the on-trade.
Since 2017, we’ve only used renewable electricity to make our products and our on-the-go bottles say ‘Please Recycle Me’ on the cap. We’ve also launched large-scale advertising initiatives like our recent ‘Sending Plastic Round in Circles’ campaign, which reminded consumers that all of our bottles and cans are 100% recyclable.
In line with our category-leading recycled PET (rPET) programme, all of our GLACEAU smartwater bottles are already made from 100% rPET – which helped to remove more than 2,800t of virgin plastic from circulation in 2019 – and the rest of our bottles have moved from 25% rPET to 50% in 2020. We’ve also changed our Sprite bottles from green to clear, to make them easier to recycle.
Back in 2012, we helped build the country’s only bottle-to-bottle reprocessing plant to increase the amount of plastic we can reuse in our products, which currently provides more than half of the materials we use for our plastic bottles in the UK. We continue to look for more ways we can support new green technologies, investing more than £1m per week in this country, and purchase goods and services worth nearly £1.4bn from UK businesses in 2020. This includes our recent investment in CuRe, whose plastic recycling pilot plant can help to pursue the vision of PET as an infinitely recyclable material. We’re also standing alongside other major players in the industry through our industry federations and continue to have a constant dialogue with government.
The coronavirus pandemic has presented us with a unique opportunity to press the refresh button on our approach to sustainability. It is our responsibility for the planet and for future generations, to ensure that we grasp this opportunity with both hands.
We can also learn important lessons. We have seen that we are stronger when we all pull together towards one collective goal. As the country moves into a sustainable recovery, being open and working together like never before has never been more important. ●
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