Coke Aims for 100% Recycle Rate

Coca Cola has announced that it plans to invest over £30m in building a PET recycling facility to recycle or reuse 100% of its plastic bottles in the United States. The plant is being built in partnership with United Resource Recovery Corporation, and is expected to be fully functional by 2009. In addition to this ambitious target Coca Cola are strengthening their ties with kerbside collection organisations such as RecycleBank. The news comes after Coke announced plans for a line of eco apparel made from recycled PET, with environmental based slogans 'I'm wearing post-consumer waste, 'My white t-shirt is green' and 'My Bag is Green'.

It's good to see a strong corporate organisation make such an ambitious target for dealing with the consumer waste it produces, especially plastics, whether or not they can step up and meet the target they have set will be seen in the long term.

In the UK companies must recycle 25% of the plastics packaging they produce, and Petcore figures from 2004 said that Europe wide we recycled just over 30% of PET bottles. I wonder will Coke make this gesture in other countries and help us out a little.