Coca-Cola has a mission – by the year 2030, all of its bottles will be made with at least 50% sustainable plastic. As part of this goal, the soft-drinks giant has released a limited line of bottles using plastic from ocean clean-up projects.
The 300 bottles are made from 25% marine waste collected by volunteers during 84 beach clean-ups in Spain and Portugal.
The plastic collected was from the Mediterranean Sea and was made up of a variety of plastics, all with different colours. Coca-Cola has said it has invested heavily in new technology to convert all sorts of plastic into the high-quality variant it needs for food and drink packaging.
The bottles replace the usual bright red strip on a Coke bottle for a green strip, meant to evoke an image of the Mediterranean Sea.
The technology used to create these bottles is thanks to a collaboration between Ioniqa Technologies, Indorama Ventures, and Coca-Cola. Ioniqa worked to create a system that can ‘depolymerise’ the plastic found in the sea and then ‘re-polymerise’ the plastic for commercial use. What this means is that the old plastic is completely broken down and rebuilt into a usable material for Coke.
This limited-run of bottles also makes up part of Coke’s 2020 mission to render the use of single-use plastic obsolete. Coca-Cola joins the likes of Aldo and Starbucks, two other companies recently that have pledged to kick the plastic and focus on sustainability and waste-prevention.
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