Sustainable Packaging

We strive to advance our zero-waste vision by:

• Designing consumer-preferred, resource-efficient packaging
• Eliminating waste to landfills
• Using recycled and/or renewable materials

Since 85 percent of our unit case volume is delivered in recyclable bottles and cans, those packages are where our innovation can make the biggest difference—and that is where we are focusing most of our effort. As we strive to improve our packaging, we balance environmental concerns with our need to protect product quality and manufacture and transport our products economically. Our approach is based on an understanding of the types of packaging we use worldwide as well as an understanding of the impact these packages have over their entire lifecycle.

2010 Coca-Cola System Global Packaging Mix

We are also looking for packaging ideas that are holistic solutions when viewed in the context of the complete product lifecycle. We are interested in innovations that deliver genuine, measurable long-term advancements toward sustainability, and not just eye-grabbing marketing slogans that will earn us public relations points in the near term. Capturing the embodied energy and raw materials in beverage bottles for reuse through recycling, we believe, is a better option for our business and for the environment than a biodegradable packaging when considered over the package lifecycle.

Managing packaging to manage risk

Most people do not think about business risk when they look at a beverage container. But we do. Our packages help meet our strict quality requirements and safely deliver our products to consumers. If a package is not energy efficient to produce, it could erode our profitability. Similarly, any time the cost of packaging materials like petroleum and aluminum increases, or any time the supply of those materials is disrupted, it means potential harm for our business. Also, changes in laws and regulations relating to beverage containers and other packaging could increase our costs and reduce demand for our products. Finally, being viewed as a contributor to global pollution could damage our brand. Developing more sustainable packaging enables us to reduce our business risk along with our impact on the environment.

In 2010, we continued the innovative lightweighting of our packaging that has proven to save costs, materials and resources. In fact, in 2010 we saved $90 million by reducing packaging waste. Here is a snapshot of our efforts from around the world:

• We launched a 10.5-gram Damla 500-ml PET bottle in Turkey.
• Our operations in the Philippines reduced the use of glass material by 20 percent through the continued rollout of Ultra Glass.
• We avoided $5 million in costs by rolling out the 1881 short-height closure on large polyethylene terephthalate, better known as PET, bottles in North America.

These achievements are a small sample of the latest in a years-long effort to make our packaging more efficient. Cumulatively, since these packaging types were introduced, we have:

• Trimmed the weight of our 20-ounce PET plastic bottle by more than 25 percent
• Shaved 30 percent from the weight of our 12-ounce aluminum can
• Lightened our 8-ounce glass bottle by more than 50 percent

If we are serious about maximizing the value of the packaging material we put into the market, recovering our beverage containers for reuse is essential. We provide leadership and funding for recovery systems around the world. Today, we recover about 36 percent of the equivalent bottles and cans sent to market.

Beverage containers remain among the most recycled consumer product packages in the world. Recovery and recycling is complicated by the fact that waste management is very much a local issue, with different circumstances in every locale. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and no way we can solve this problem alone. We recognize that collaboration is critical to advance our vision faster, so we work closely with governments, NGOs, local communities and our industry partners to create stewardship systems that make sense for the markets they serve, and, whenever possible, create jobs.

In developing markets, we work with government and industry to advance informal collection systems, helping them become formal systems for the recovery of packaging material while creating sustainable jobs. In developed markets, we support approaches that include comprehensive recovery of materials through industry recovery organizations.

Our support of recycling systems spans the globe. In 2010, the Thailand Institute of Packaging and Recycling Management for Sustainable Environment, an industry organization we are part of, embarked on a new partnership with authorities in Thailand’s Pathum Thani province. The project aims to develop a more comprehensive and effective integrated waste management program. In Mexico’s Toluca Valley, bottling partner Grupo CIMSA continued its successful PET-bottle collection program. Started in 2002, the program now includes 737 collection points, including locations at schools, churches, hospitals and NGOs. Approximately 233,000 people have participated in the program to date. We also expanded a partnership we initially launched in Brazil to a regional initiative for Pan-Latin America. The Regional Initiative for Inclusive Recycling is a four-year effort to transform the recycling market in Latin America by improving the socioeconomic status of recyclers and their families; enhancing private sector roles so that recycling cooperatives thrive in a competitive market; and supporting public policy so that recycling cooperatives become part of local waste management systems. The partnership includes the Inter-American Development Bank, Fundación AVINA and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Educating consumers is also key to increasing recycling rates. In North America, Coca-Cola Recycling education vehicles travel to various cities, teaching consumers about the good things that happen when people recycle. Equipped with interactive displays, games and videos, our fleet of five education vehicles will visit venues and events where our products are consumed throughout 2011.

Supporting the RPET market

For recycling programs to work, the programs need to be strong end markets for reprocessed PET plastic, known in the industry as RPET. To help ensure a demand for RPET, we support the creation of merchandise made from the material. We are involved in partnerships that make a variety of consumer goods from RPET, including caps, T-shirts, bags, notebooks and the Emeco 111 Navy Chair. Through these merchandise programs, we are reinforcing our Give It Back® campaign. We are engaging consumers and educating them that their actions can make a difference with simple messaging such as letting them know that five recycled PET bottles can become one of their favorite T-shirts.

Helping to clean up the oceans

Marine litter, though its causes and effects are not fully understood, is a matter of great concern to us, scientists, conservationists and others. Unfortunately, our packaging is among the waste that can be found improperly disposed of on shorelines around the world. So, we have an obligation to help address marine litter in earnest.

For 16 years we have partnered with Ocean Conservancy—providing funding, in-kind support and volunteer assistance—to help clean up the seas and further investigate the causes and effects of marine pollution. In late 2010, we co-hosted a workshop on accelerating solutions for marine debris with Ocean Conservancy. The workshop, facilitated by The Keystone Center, brought together leading thinkers and practitioners from government, industry, academia and the NGO community who are committed to advancing research and solutions on the issue. The workshop outcomes provided input into the design and content of the Fifth International Marine Debris Conference that was held in March 2011 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United Nations Environment Programme. The Coca-Cola Company was invited to serve as the industry representative on the steering committee and as a lead sponsor of the conference.

In 2011, we helped Ocean Conservancy launch the Trash Free Seas Alliance, a cooperative group of businesses, NGOs, scientific institutions and community groups that share the common goal of eliminating ocean trash. Our hope is that the Trash Free Seas Alliance will accelerate action among the varied stakeholders who must work together to restore the world’s seas. One of the first accomplishments of this group was the proposal acceptance by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) to support a working group on marine debris. NCEAS is one of the foremost ecological think tanks in the world. This working group will bring together a group of leading ecologists, oceanographers, social scientists, industry market experts, behavioral economists and polymer scientists to evaluate existing data and published information as well as conduct integrative modeling to significantly advance the scientific understanding of marine debris globally.

Implementing our new packaging management system: slow but steady progress

In our last sustainability report, the 2009/2010 Sustainability Review, we announced implementation of a new comprehensive product management system that will enable us to improve packaging efficiency and better track packaging over its lifespan—from raw materials through design, manufacturing, use and disposal. Such tracking can help leverage our new package designs from market to market and bottler to bottler, and improve packaging efficiency and resource management.

We had expected to be using the system by early 2011. In fact, while we have collected much of the data we need to implement the system as we envisioned it, a great deal of work remains. Gathering information from our bottling partners around the world is taking more time than we expected. Also, capturing data on packages other than our bottles and cans—wrappers and boxes, for example—has also proved more time-consuming than we predicted.

PlantBottle^TM packaging: redefining the performance of plastic packaging

More than 50 percent of our beverage volume is delivered in plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate, better known as PET. We use PET plastic bottles for many reasons. Consumers like them because they are lightweight, resealable and shatter-resistant. They are also highly recyclable, which is one of the reasons we continue to focus our innovation on PET versus another type of plastic. The processes for making and transporting PET bottles are relatively energy-efficient and cost-effective, and PET plastic protects our product quality exceptionally well.

The environmental lifecycle performance of PET combined with its operational performance makes this plastic package a sound business choice.

But with increasing pressure on natural resources—particularly on the petroleum and natural gas required to make conventional PET bottles—businesses like ours are seeking alternatives to conventional PET bottles. That is why our research and development team created PlantBottle^TM packaging. PlantBottle^TM is the first-ever fully recyclable PET bottle made partially from plants.

While we are proud of the incremental improvements made to enhance PET packaging over the years, we believe more transformative changes are required to stay competitive in a world with increasing pressures on natural resources. With PlantBottle^TM packaging, we have a commercial solution today for manufacturing one of the two primary ingredients in PET from plant-based material and are well on our way to discovering a commercial solution for the second ingredient.

In 2010 alone, the use of this breakthrough packaging eliminated more than 60,000 barrels of oil. As our PlantBottle^TM packaging is in part made from plants that absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere, we estimate that our use of PlantBottle^TM packaging in the first two years has helped save the equivalent annual emissions of more than 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is equal to emissions from more than 20,000 automobiles. Our target is to have all virgin PET plastic used in our bottles made with PlantBottle^TM packaging by 2020.

An idea like PlantBottle^TM has too much good potential to keep to ourselves. So in February 2011, we shared our technology and entered into a partnership with H.J. Heinz Company, enabling Heinz to bottle its ketchup in PlantBottle^TM packaging. Moving forward, we will continue to explore the potential of such partnerships with other companies.

Others are noticing the value of PlantBottle^TM as well. In 2010, PlantBottle^TM won a DuPont Award for Packaging Innovation from among more than 160 other global entrants. In April 2011, PlantBottle^TM packaging received an Edison Award recognizing the most innovative products from a variety of categories.

We believe so strongly in PlantBottle^TM as a catalyst for change that we are working with our partners to rapidly expand the PlantBottle^TM supply chain. In just a few short years, we have expanded from producing PlantBottle^TM PET plastic in a single location to now having facilities in most of our major markets, with much more expansion to come. As we continue to grow the capacity of PlantBottle^TM packaging material, we are working with partners in academia to ensure that the source of plant-based material also remains environmentally and socially sustainable.

Increasing recycled content

As we look for alternatives to nonrenewable materials, we are also increasing the amount of recycled material in our packages. To date, our system has invested in seven² bottle-to-bottle facilities that improve our capacity for using recycled material. We continue to invest in exploration of new technologies that could enable us to increase the amount of recycled material we use. We are also working with countries around the world to remove regulations that bar the use of recycled materials, and to secure additional approvals for the use of such materials.

²This figure represents our systemwide investments.

One important lesson we have learned on our journey toward zero waste is that more sustainable packaging is a complex issue, and a hard one to communicate. Terms like “renewable” and “recyclable” can blur together in the public’s mind, and innovations mean little if they are not readily available in the market, or if consumers do not perceive them as convenient and beneficial. We have seen that we have to work harder at communicating clearly with consumers and other stakeholders when we believe we have made an important advancement in packaging.

For example, we have found it is important to remind consumers that our PlantBottle^TM packaging is still fully recyclable and not biodegradable, despite being made partly from plants. Similarly, we have been challenged in communicating the benefits of our Ultra Glass contour bottle for Coca-Cola. The Ultra Glass design is smaller and, on average, 20 percent lighter, yet is stronger, less expensive to produce and holds the same amount of product as its predecessor. Best of all, it has saved tens of thousands of metric tons of glass and related greenhouse gas emissions. But despite these benefits (and our efforts to communicate them), consumers in some markets have perceived the package as containing less product and have been slow to accept it.

As we continue to advance our efforts in each of our focus areas, we intend to better communicate the work we are doing and why it matters to our business, as well as governments, consumers and NGOs, as we all work toward eliminating waste and recognizing the value of packaging.

A positive recent trend we see in the movement toward zero waste is the development of common metrics for more sustainable packaging being facilitated by The Consumer Goods Forum. A common language along with a framework and measurement system on “packaging sustainability“ will help businesses, governments, consumers and NGOs as we all work toward eliminating waste.