The NRC honored Coca-Cola for its assertive and broad approach to environmental sustainability. Coke's Sandy Douglas, in accepting the award has "set the bar" even higher for his company...announcing the following new goal....
Coca-Cola sets aluminum recycling goal
Atlanta Business Chronicle
The Coca-Cola Co is aiming to eventually recycle or reuse 100 percent of the aluminum beverage cans it sells in America. Atlanta-based Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) said the 100-percent goal is a long-term target.
One out of every two aluminum cans is recycled today, Coca-Cola said. Recycling aluminum is efficient and requires 95 percent less energy than creating aluminum from raw materials. It also reduces carbon emissions by 95 percent. Coca-Cola said it uses an average 60 percent recycled aluminum in its beverage cans.
Coca-Cola has previously set a goal to recycle or reuse 100 percent of its PET plastic bottles. In 2007, it spent $60 million in a series of recycling initiatives, including support of RecycleBank's curbside collection program and the construction of the world's largest PET bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, S.C.
In 2007, Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. created Coca-Cola Recycling LLC to recover and recycle the packaging materials developed and used by the Coca-Cola system.
"We established Coca-Cola Recycling to help increase recycling rates in North America and to ensure that our system has ready access to recycled material," said John Burgess, president and chief operating officer of Coca-Cola Recycling. "By the end of 2008, Coca-Cola Recycling will recycle more than 100 million pounds each of PET and aluminum."
Alcoa applauds Coca-Cola's aggressive approach to recycling. It dovetails with our recent call action to pushing the recycling rate on aluminum beverage cans up to 75% by 2015. This is an ambitious goal, requiring industry, government and the public to join forces to recapture another 400,000 metric tons of aluminum.
This campaign will require us to change behavior and simultaneously make the process much easier than it has been in the past. There are a host of exciting initiatives under way to work on both of these issues.
Posted by Greg Wittbecker
