Coca-Cola extends its investment in recycling scheme for plastic bottles

Coca-Cola has extended its investment in Ioniqa, a recycling company aimed at working towards a circular economy.

The investment is intended to accelerate the scale-up of Ioniqa’s recycling technology for PET. Ioniqa is clean-tech spinoff from the Netherlands specialising in creating value out of waste.

PET is widely used to produce plastic packaging but only 20 per cent of the material is recycled.

To combat this, Ioniqa has developed a recycling technology that is able to convert hard-to-recycle PET-containing waste like coloured bottles into purified polymer building blocks that can be later re-formed into high quality PET.

The initiative will accelerate the development and deployment of high grade recycled content PET for use in bottled used by The Coca-Cola Company.

Robert Long, Chief Innovation Officer for The Coca-Cola Company, said: “Our investment in new and pioneering recycling technologies is an opportunity for significant movement toward closing the loop and creating a circular economy for PET. We plan to continue investment in developing the right partnerships and initiatives – like with Ioniqa – to support our vision of a World without Waste.”

Ben R. Jordan, Senior Director of Environmental Policy at the Coca-Cola Company, spoke of the importance of recycling at the Sustainable Innovation Forum. He said: "We have teams mapping out where we need to see more bottle to bottle recycling plants...ideally you want to go circular at a local a level as possible!”

This news follows the UK Government announcing their new waste strategy to combat the growing plastic pollution.