Coca-Cola Pledges to Use More Refillable Bottles

In February, The Coca-Cola Company announced that it aims to have, by 2030, at least 25% of all its beverage bottles globally, across all its brands, sold in refillable/returnable glass or plastic bottles, or in refillable cups/containers through traditional fountain or Coca-Cola Freestyle dispensers. That would be an increase from 16% in 2020. The company previously pledged to use 50% recycled material in all its packaging by 2030.

According to sources at major PET resin producers, there is a strong market for refillable PET bottles in Mexico and some parts of South America, and its use in those regions is growing faster than one-way PET bottles. However total usage of refillable PET bottles in the Americas is said to be less than 1% of the regional total. One reason is lack of infrastructure for returning, cleaning and refilling PET bottles in North America. In Europe, Germany is said to be the main user of refillable PET bottles, which are not a significant factor in the UK, France, Spain and Benelux countries.

Refillable bottles weigh considerably more than one-way PET bottles. For example, returnable 1-liter PET bottles for still or carbonated beverages reportedly weigh 55 to 65 g, while a one-way 2 L carbonated soft-drink bottle typically weighs around 45 g and a 1.5 L CSD bottle weighs 24 g.

Nonetheless, Coca-Cola says, “By increasing our use of reusable packaging, we promote a circular economy, as refillable containers have high levels of collection” and have low carbon footprint “because the container collection is built into the beverage delivery model.”

Coca-Cola says returnable/refillable glass and PET bottles currently represent more than 50% of the company’s product sales in more than 20 markets and more than 25% of sales in another 20 markets. The company also notes that refillables are outperforming non-refillables in Germany and parts of Latin America, where reusable bottles represented 27% of sales in 2020.

Besides refillable bottles, Coca-Cola is partnering with Burger King and TerraCycle in the U.S. on a pilot program in select cities to reduce single-use packaging waste by offering reusable beverage cups and food containers. Coca-Cola is also introducing reusable cups with microchips for use with Coca-Cola Freestyle machines at theme parks and on cruise ships and university campuses.