From:Packaging News

Coca-Cola has announced plans to decrease the amount of virgin plastic content in its UK manufactured bottles and use around 40% rPET by 2020.

According to its recently published Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Report 2014/15, report, around 34% of the PET purchased by the firm in the UK and overseas in 2014 was rPET.

The soft drinks giant said: “We aim to play our part in ensuring that consumers know how and where our packages can be recycled, and support the reprocessing infrastructure so that the bottles collected can be turned into new bottles.

“Working together, we can improve this cycle in order to ensure a consistent, high quality supply of materials for our packaging, and reach our target of 40% recycled and/or renewable PET by 2020.”

In the report, the company which recently unveiled the world’s first PET plastic bottle made entirely from plant materials, added: “It takes about 60% less energy to produce recycled PET (rPET) than virgin plastics, making rPET the second greatest opportunity to reduce our packaging carbon emissions.”

“Over the past few years we have begun to look for new, renewable sources of PET plastic. In 2009 we introduced PlantBottle, in which we have been able to replace one of the key molecules in PET with a chemically identical material derived from sugar cane and molasses.

“The resulting material looks, functions and recycles like traditional PET but has a lower carbon footprint. Work is now ongoing with partners to create the other key molecular component of PlantBottle from renewable materials.”