WASHINGTON – America’s leading beverage companies announced on Earth Day 2024 that the actions it is taking to create a circular economy for its bottles and cans are working to reduce their use of new plastic. 

Our plastic bottles are made to be remade. They are carefully designed to be 100% recyclable and when collected can be turned into new bottles again and again, as intended. Our priority is to use more recycled plastic in our bottles to reduce our plastic footprint, decrease our industry’s CO2 emissions and keep plastic out of nature. 

The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr Pepper and PepsiCo have embarked on an aggressive plastics initiative – Every Bottle Back – to implement solutions to plastic pollution and to decrease our use of new plastic in bottles. 

It starts with the well-designed plastic we use for bottles. PET plastic is a valuable, durable and versatile plastic. As such, our plastic bottles are accepted in recycling programs in all 50 states, and PET is the most recyclable and recycled plastic in the USA. 

When recycled, our bottles can be remade into new bottles. Using recycled PET (rPET) instead of new plastic for bottles reduces total energy consumption by 79% and limits greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 67%. 

This is what makes rPET so valuable. We are investing in ways to create more of it to decrease the amount of new plastic used to make bottles, and other producers want rPET for their products as well. 

Among the comprehensive set of actions the beverage industry is taking to create a circular economy for plastic bottles:

• We are investing $100 million to leverage a fund of nearly half-a-billion dollars overseen by environmental partners to modernize recycling infrastructure and services in key areas of the country.
  • We’ve provided more than 1 million large capacity recycling carts for free to cities and towns and have funded state-of-the-art equipment at collection facilities that will improve the quality and amount of recycled materials.
  • Projects committed to thus far in conjunction with sustainability leaders Closed Loop Partners and The Recycling Partnership will yield an estimated 900 million more pounds of recycled plastic and 87 million more pounds of recycled aluminum. 
• The beverage industry has added uniform recycling reminders on all its bottles that urge consumers to recycle their bottles with the cap on.
• We are running nationwide multimedia communications and advertising to inspire confidence among consumers that a bottle recycled is a bottle that can be remade.
• We have partnered with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on the development of essential principles for well-designed collection policies such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
  • In Colorado, beverage companies joined with WWF to pass landmark legislation for a statewide EPR program that will raise recycling rates and provide access to recycling to hundreds of thousands of people who do not have it.
• Our industry spearheaded efforts on Capitol Hill to have funds for recycling improvements included in the 2022 federal infrastructure bill.
  • That package includes $350 million for grants that municipalities can use to expand their recycling systems and $75 million to inform consumers how to recycle better.
• The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr Pepper and PepsiCo have agreed to make 100% of packaging recyclable globally by 2025.

These actions are showing results. The amount of rPET in our bottles is growing, as is the number of bottles made from 100% recycled plastic (excluding caps and labels). We are using less new plastic in our bottles – reducing our plastic footprint. 

Earth Month is a reminder to our companies to continue our meaningful efforts to reduce our impact on the environment. We are committed to being part of the solution, and we are far from done. Learn more at www.everybottleback.org 

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