Zero Waste Tisza program has won an international PR award

Coca-Cola Hungary’s environmental protection CSR program, the Zero Waste Tisza has won the International Public Relations Association’s award: the program launched to clean River Tisza and its surrounding has earned the prestigious award in two categories.

At the 2020 Golden World Award of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), which is present in 80 countries, Coca-Cola Hungary won awards in two categories (Environmental and Community relations) with its Zero Waste Tisza program. Considered as the Oscars for PR, the Golden World Award has been granted to the world’s most outstanding and exemplary programs since 1990. “Many entries tackled health issues including responses to covid-19, while conserving tuna stocks featured in Japan, and Hungary imagined a world without waste”, the Association’s announcement states.

In the summer of 2019, Coca‑Cola Hungary committed to clean Tisza, the second longest river in Hungary, partnering with the water management directorate and an NGO. The Zero Waste Tisza program, supported by The Coca‑Cola Foundation with HUF 73 million, focuses on removing plastic pollution from the river and accumulated garbage from the floodplain; these goals are also supported by volunteer actions of Coca‑Cola Hungary.

Together with the PET Cup, the main objective of the two-year-long Zero Waste Tisza program is to collect and recycle at least 80 tons of waste. So far, the company has collected more than 49 tons of waste with the PET Cup.

Beyond financial support, Coca‑Cola Hungary also organized three volunteer days with the participation of 170 colleagues in total. Besides the great waste collection in the summer, the volunteers also cleaned particularly polluted, environmentally important areas during the year, such as Natura 2000 forests – these actions were coordinated by the PET Cup.

The program continues in 2020. Experts of the PET Cup let PET bottles equipped with GPS into the river, with the help of the Upper Tisza Diving and Lifeguard Organization. The four bottles thrown into the flooding Tisza at Vásárosnamény are helping the PET Cup’s waste monitoring program. During the tracking research, the bottles receive GPS signals and transmit radio signals. The devices developed within the Zero Waste Tisza project can help to track the waste’s path that floats on the river for up to two years.

This is not the only award the company has won with the program: it had been already granted awards from an international competition, the Communitas Awards and The Hungarian Business Leaders Forum’s Business world for the Environment Award.

First mission:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwYTBtwxgA4&feature=emb_title
Second mission:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v8yMKDUso0