World Without Waste

In January 2018 Coca-Cola HBC joined forces with The Coca-Cola Company and launched the World Without Waste project. One of the project’s goals is to collect and recycle the equivalent of 100 percent of the company’s plastic bottle and aluminium can packaging worldwide by 2030. As the first step, last year they made the pledge that each primary packaging must be 100-percent recyclable, and growing a proportion of recycled PET must be used in PET bottle production.

Progress has already been made in Hungary: 100 percent of the PET bottles used by Coca-Cola HBC Hungary are recyclable. Today l5 percent less plastic is needed for manufacturing bottles than in 2010. In 2018 Hungary’s biggest soft drink manufacturer spent HUF 500 million on introducing innovative, eco-friendly packaging solutions. Thanks to these steps, the company used 4 percent less plastic in production. By 2020 Coca-Cola Hungary will reduce the average weight of bottles by 20 percent (compared with 2010). Besides, at group level the goal is to use 50 percent recycled plastic in PET bottle production by 2030 – in the near future 100 percent of Coca-Cola bottles will be made from rPET.

In Hungary floods always pollute the river Tisza with waste, so the General Directorate of Water Management, non-governmental programme PET Cup and The Coca-Cola Foundation teamed up to collect and recycle the waste from the river this July – the foundation donates HUF 73 million to the 2-year Zero Waste Tisza River project. On 26 July 2019 nearly 70 Coca-Cola workers went to the Kisköre section of river Tisza to collect waste. On this day volunteers collected almost 1.5 tons of waste as part of the PET Cup programme – mainly plastic floating on the river and in the reeds. All of this waste will be sorted and recycled. (x)