Coca-Cola Company Unveils Plans to Curb Global Plastic Waste

A leading beverage company, Coca-Cola has unveiled programmes aimed at reducing plastic waste around the globe in furtherance of its environmental sustainability projects.

This was made known recently by the company through a release titled “Coca-Cola Strategic Intervention in Environmental Sustainability”.

The company said the new plan would be geared at reducing plastic waste globally, setting an ambitious goal of making 100% of its packaging recyclable globally by 2025.

It added that the company had begun by redesigning PET for its products in order to make them recyclable.

The beverage company said, “Sprite, one of its largest global sparkling beverage brands discontinued its trademark iconic green coloured PET and made the switch to clear PET packaging in 2020 across several markets globally, including Nigeria as of August 1, 2022.

“This enables better recycling and easier conversion into new bottles by increasing the supply of high-value recycled plastic in the after-use market.

 “The economy is currently linear, with materials extracted from the earth and products made from them eventually discarded as waste; however, with these investments in environmental sustainability, a circular economy is being launched, which means waste will be reduced and possibly avoided.

“Another signature project is the Empowering Collectors Initiative, implemented by Growing Businesses Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, with the objective to improve the largely unorganised plastic waste collection, aggregation, and recycling process in Nigeria, which also includes the daily accomplishments of predefined tasks linked to the goals of the project.

“The project has scaled collections and micro-aggregation of plastic waste in six states: Kaduna, Lagos, Oyo, Enugu, Rivers, and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, with a target of recovering a minimum of 25,000MT of PET plastics, thus providing decent work and economic opportunity to plastic waste collectors and micro-aggregators,” the statement report revealed.