The Coca-Cola Company will use bottles made from 100 per cent recycled plastic (rPET bottles) for sparkling beverages sold in Canada.
Coca-Cola plans to change all 500-millilitre bottles for 12 products and stop using virgin plastic when producing these bottles by February 2024, except for the caps and labels.
The rPET bottles will be produced in Coke Canada Bottling's Richmond manufacturing facility, as well as three others in Ontario, Alberta and Quebec.
According to Coca-Cola, this would mark the first time 500-millilitre sparkling beverages are sold in rPET bottles in Canada.
"We hope that transitioning our 500-millilitre sparkling portfolio to 100 per cent recycled plastic will increase the amount of high-quality, food-grade, recycled plastic available in Canada and, ultimately, enable us to offer more of our brands in this sustainable format," said Kurt Ritter, Coca-Cola North America spokesperson.
The transition is part of the company's sustainability goals and will save 7.6 million pounds of new plastic in 2024, said Coca-Cola, which would have been enough bottles to wrap the circumference of the moon twice. It would also reduce almost 7,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually.
The company expects to create and sustain a circular economy where plastic packaging can be "cleaned, sorted and ground into small flakes" to serve as raw material for more new bottles.
The 12 Coca-Cola beverages switching to the new bottles are:
- Coca-Cola
- Diet Coke
- Coca-Cola Zero Sugar
- Fanta
- Fresca
- Sprite
- Sprite Zero Sugar
- Coca-Cola Cherry
- Coca-Cola Cherry Zero Sugar
- Barq’s
- Barq’s Cherry Bite
- AHA
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