Coca-Cola wins recycling award

Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta, received an award for outstanding corporate responsibility for its leadership in using recycled PET resin. The award, from the Plastic Redesign Project, Madison, WI, was presented at a luncheon Feb. 26, at the Take It Back! 2003 conference in Alexandria, VA, sponsored by Raymond Communications (Columbia, MD).

Mar 31st, 2003

“Coke has spurred a revolution in the economics of plastics recycling,” Peter Anderson of PRP said in making the award. He lauded the company for “following on your decade of technology development with a public commitment” to the use of recycled PET in soft drink bottles. This commitment was made in 2000.

“Our system has worked extremely hard over the past decade,” said Coca-Cola’s environmental manager Scott Vitters, investing “more than $15 million to develop sustainable recycling technologies for food contact applications.” Later, Vitters announced that this year Coke “has reached its 10 percent [recycled]-content commitment in 80 percent of its bottles” and is ahead of schedule in meeting its goal of all bottles by 2005.

The PRP is a coalition of local and state recycling officials working to improve the economics of plastics recycling. —AO