Coca-Cola Targets 100% Recycled Plastic Packaging by 2030

By ogrepublic Last updated Sep 29, 2023

4th edition of Lagos Waste Forum 2023, a high-level citizens' forum on waste reduction and management held from 12 - 13 September 2023 in Lagos.

By Genevieve Aningo

In a bid to curtail the diverse effects of climate change and waste prevention, Coca-Cola one of the world’s leading beverage companies, has set a target to recycle 100 percent of its plastic bottles used in packaging beverage drinks by 2030.

Amaka Oyemelukwe, Coca-Cola’s Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability Director disclosed this at the 4th edition of Lagos Waste Forum 2023, a high-level citizens’ forum on waste reduction and management held from 12 – 13 September 2023 in Lagos.

The theme of the event, ‘Investing in Plastics Recovery Towards A Circular Economy,” brought together industry stakeholders in the circular economy and waste management as they devised strategies to recover plastic waste in Lagos State and across Nigeria that would ultimately yield economic value, create jobs, and save the environment from degradation.

Speaking on behalf of Coca-Cola Nigeria, Amaka Oyemelukwe said: “Our aspiration is that 100 percent of our bottles can come back to us and be recycled by the year 2030, the equivalent of all of them, because we also understand that other brands are also using these packaging materials.

“Coca-Cola bottle beverages are packaged in PET containers, and we recognize that if these PET bottles are recycled, they can come back to us so we can use them to package another beverage. This is why the theme is important to us because we are advocating the power of our brand. In every one of our bottles, you would see “Please Recycle Me”.

“We are calling out consumers and the likes of the SWEEP Foundation to help. We have over 120 points in the Surulere community where we have put out bins that are dedicated to plastic collections because we want them to be close to households so people can easily see where they toss them after consuming the beverage so that they can be recycled.”

Onyemelukwe mentioned that Coca-Cola Nigeria is collaborating with other stakeholders in the circular economy to achieve this target and create economic value in the plastic value chain.
However, she pointed out that the challenge is the absence of sorting waste before disposal among Nigerians.

“We are driving leadership as Coca-Cola, which is why we have the Industry Alliance, where we are calling on other partners to be on the table so that we can achieve an economy of skills to make sure that the circular economy space is sustainable and commercially viable.

“We have seen industries spring up as a result of more and more bottles coming back, but the feedback today is that they are coming back in a manner that is unclean because they have gotten to the dumpsite, are more difficult to recycle, and cannot meet the food grade that we can use to bottle another bottle. Thus, our message today is for all of us to start to separate our waste from our kitchen,” she noted.

She stressed that dirty or contaminated plastics require more recycling mechanisms and can most times only be recycled into other products “But as a food company that bottles food, our circular economy model is that we want to use that bottle to create another bottle; that is the ultimate aim,” said Onyemelukwe.

Onyemelukwe also beckoned on the government to create an enabling environment by assigning space to encourage plastic pickers and aggregators to derive optimal value from the plastic recycling chain.

She added: “Empty spaces that are not being used can be used to aggregate those bottles in large quantities because an off-taker wants to also gain transport efficiency; he doesn’t want to move from one collector to another collecting it in wrinkles, so if we have a clustered point where all the waste pickers or collectors in that region can aggregate their plastics so that the day the aggregator is coming he can buy all of them in large form, that is why we believe that the government is the greatest enabler”.