The UK arm of Coca-Cola (Atlanta, Georgia / USA; www.coca-cola.com) has announced that all its on-the-go plastic bottles in sizes of 500 ml or less will be made of 100% recycled PET from September 2021. The bottles will still be recyclable.

The global soft drinks behemoth said the move would save 29,000 t/y of virgin plastics, the same weight as 2,292 double decker buses. Coca-Cola added that it was switching from plastic shrink wrap to cardboard packaging across all its multipack products.

Jon Woods, general manager at Coca‑Cola Great Britain, said the announcement “marks an important step towards our ambition to remove all non-recycled plastic from our bottles, and our global aim to help collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one that we sell by 2025”.

Coca-Cola, a member of the UK Plastics Pact (see Plasteurope.com of 04.05.2018), has also thrown its weight behind various deposit return schemes planned across the UK. Scotland expects to have a scheme in place by July next year, with Wales and England looking at eventually implementing similar programmes.