In a series of carefully timed releases the Coca-Cola Company made two major announcements this week. First the company announced on Tuesday the launch of their new PET plastic bottle.
Tuesday's announcement was followed up on Wednesday with the announcement the company will build a $60 PET recycling facility in Spartanburg, S.C. with the United Resource Recovery Corporation.
Coca-Cola's new PET contour bottle will be used for all of its brands and uses 5% less PET than their current bottle.
The new 20-ounce bottle is designed to be easy-to-hold and easy-to-open offering on-the-go convenience to people looking for immediate refreshment.
Coca-Cola said consumers can except to see the new bottles in convenience stores immediately and nationwide by early 2008.
The company's new PET recycling facility will be the world's largest plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling plant when it opens in 2008. The plant is expected to be operational by 2009.
The joint venture with United Resource Recovery Corporation will produce approximately 100 million pounds of food-grade recycled PET plastic each year - or the equivalent of two billion 20-ounce Coca-Cola bottles.
The Spartanburg facility will use URRC's patented UnPET process for chemically super-cleaning PET flake for cost efficient food grade packaging. The new facility and technology are related to a five year development program between the two companies begun in 1996. The companies were working together to commercialize the UnPET process by producing food-grade quality PET chip for bottle-to-bottle recycling.
Based on the recent announcement regarding construction of the new $60 million facility, it would appear they were successful.
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And it only costs $60 to build?
Posted by: James | September 07, 2007 at 01:31 PM
If coca cola truly cares about the environment, why have they switched from distributing their products in reusable plastic totes and switch to cardboard and shrinkwrap? They don't know if the business is recycling them, which most are not. The plastic reusable crate just made more sense for the enviroment.
Posted by: Nikki | June 23, 2009 at 10:49 PM