Coca-Cola in Hong Kong recycles locally collected plastic bottles
Coca-Cola in Hong Kong, represented by The Coca-Cola Company and its bottling partner Swire Coca-Cola, has reaffirmed its commitment to reducing beverage packaging waste by recycling locally collected plastic bottles into new ones. The initiative leverages the advanced recycling facility supported by the Coca-Cola System in Hong Kong.
As Hong Kong faces challenges in managing beverage packaging waste, Swire Coca-Cola, one of the world’s largest Coca-Cola bottlers, has invested in New Life Plastics Limited (NLP) – Hong Kong’s first food-grade-ready plastic bottle recycling facility. NLP is designed to process up to two million plastic beverage bottles daily, but currently handles fewer than 800,000, underscoring the need for greater community collection efforts.
A recent Coca-Cola Hong Kong survey of 1,125 local consumers sheds light on the public’s recycling habits and the challenges that Hong Kong faces in its recycling efforts, thus underscoring that while Hong Kongers are willing to recycle – with 67.29% said they “are already trying to recycle as much as possible” – they need more accessible infrastructure. The survey revealed that the top challenges for recycling are “insufficient or inconvenient recycling infrastructure” (77.16%). Many also expressed concern that “recyclables are not properly processed” (24.09%).
Consumer preference for sustainable products is clear, with 63.56% prioritising environmentally friendly packaging and 80.98% indicating that manufacturers’ sustainability efforts increase consumers’ purchase intent.
Over the years, Coca-Cola in Hong Kong has continued to increase the use of recycled material in their primary packaging, while also achieving many other packaging innovation milestones, including but not limited to reducing plastic and rethinking packaging.
Reducing Plastic: Each bonaqua 500ml bottle weighs just 11.8g, 52.8% lighter than typical PET bottles
Rethinking Packaging: Various Coca-Cola brands have started using rPET in bottle production since 2019. In 2020 and 2024 respectively, bonaqua water (1.5L or below) and Coca-Cola Trademark beverage (500ml) adopted 100% rPET to produce their bottles, excluding caps and labels. Also, bonaqua’s label-less bottles not only reduce packaging waste, but also help improve their recyclability through game-changing packaging design. Sprite and Schweppes have also transitioned to clear bottles to help enhance bottle recyclability.
Partnering to collect
Over the years, in partnership with industry peers and other organisations, including Drink Without Waste and The Green Future Foundation Association, Coca-Cola in Hong Kong has been supporting consumer education and community collection programs to help enable beverage packaging recycling, including bulk collection efforts in Tin Shui Wai and our other neighborhood education and collection initiatives in other participating housing estates around the city.
“At Swire Coca-Cola HK, we continue to leverage our expertise and develop new manufacturing technologies to offer consumers even more environmentally friendly beverage packaging choices. We weave sustainability into the fabric of our endeavors, from design, sourcing, production to product delivery,” said Richard Gould, Director and General Manager of Swire Coca-Cola HK. “We are proud that we are the first in Hong Kong, by leveraging our own local recycling and production facilities, in using locally collected plastic bottles to create new ones. We invite our consumers to separate and return used bottles, knowing their returned bottles can be and will be given a new life, again and again.”
Photo: rPET bottles made from locally recycled plastics are used for new packaging at Coca-Cola’s production facility in Shatin