Coke Makes 100% Recycling Pledge for 2012 Olympics

Coca-Cola has promised to recycle all clear plastic PET bottles used at the London 2012 Olympics, according to news reports.

The company has partnered with Sita UK, the waste management partner of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog), and aims to recycle the materials into 80 million new Coke bottles within six weeks of the games ending, Marketing reports.

Coke will recycle its own bottles as well as those of other companies.

Locog has a target of zero waste to landfill and has pledged that at least 70 percent of all waste will be reused, recycled or composted. Coke says its own recycling will account for about a fifth of consumer waste produced at the Olympic Park.

In March Coca-Cola Enterprises and ECO Plastics formed a joint venture to develop a facility to more than double the amount of PET bottles recycled in Great Britain.

The Lincolnshire facility will raise the amount of PET bottles recycled from 35,000 tons last year to more than 75,000 tons when the plant is fully operational in 2012. Coca-Cola said the move will supply it with enough material to meet its target of including 25 percent recycled PET in all its plastic packaging in Great Britain by next year.

But across the pond, the company’s joint-venture recycling plant in Spartanburg, S.C., has been plagued by difficulties, closing for restructuring, laying off workers and then re-opening.

For more on Coke’s sustainability strategy for the 2012 Olympics, see this video.