Aluminium cans become lighter, a vision forming campaign is launched on the caps of plastic bottles

Coca-Cola Hungary reduced the weight of aluminium cans by thirteen percent. From 2020, for the packaging of canned soft drinks produced in Hungary and distributed in 19 countries, the company uses almost 170 tons less aluminium a year, significantly reducing the environmental load during production and delivery, as well as the total ecological footprint of the company. It also launches a campaign for the greatest possible recollection of soft drink packaging, as it believes that the cycle guranteed by the collection and recycling of packaging is the most efficient way to handle packaging waste.

The weight decrease of aluminium cans and the decrease in the use of pallet foil started last year means that the yearly weight of the amount delivered is reduced by more than 210 tons. As this makes the packaging much lighter, delivery requires less resources and energy.

The company improved the packaging of soft drinks several times in recent years. Taking environmental aspects into consideration, Coca-Cola Hungary is probably going to replace the plastic packaging of four- and six-pack cans with innovative cardboard packaging in 2021.

One of the aims of Coca-Cola’s global Zero Waste World strategy is to collect as many plastic bottles and aluminium cans by 2030 as the amount sold. To advocate selective garbage collection, the company launches a national vision forming campaign in the framework of which it is going to replace the cap of all soft drinks: the logo of the given brand will be replaced by a drawing encouraging the recycling of the bottle.

The plastic bottles distributed by Coca-Cola are already 100 percent recyclable; the proportion of recycled plastic used in bottles is an average 24 percent which the company undertakes to increase to 50 percent by 2030. The amount of plastic used in Hungarian production decreased by 15 percent in the last years, and this year, as a result of a 100 million forint technological development, the amount of plastic used for carbonated soft drink bottles will be further reduced by 4 percent. This single step in itself means that the company uses 600 tons less plastic a year, equivalent to the weight of 24 million PET bottles. PET bottles constitute only 3% of the total packaging waste in Hungary.