Coca-Cola leads solutions on plastic recovery effort

Plastic, which is lightweight, strong and easily molded into various forms, has no doubt revolutionized our everyday lives and provided convenience in the way we consume products.

But largely due to improper waste management and disposal, plastic has unfortunately given rise to a global waste problem.

To address the concern, Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines, Inc. (CCBPI), the bottling arm of Coca-Cola in the country, has partnered with Thailand-based Indorama Ventures, a global leader in recycling and green technologies, to establish PETValue, the biggest state-of-the-art, bottle-to-bottle PET recycling facility in the country.

“PETValue Philippines represents Coca-Cola’s first investment in a recycling facility in Southeast Asia. It demonstrates the Company’s genuine commitment to our World Without Waste vision — it is not just talk, we really want to establish a circular economy for our recyclable PET plastic packaging,” says Gareth McGeown, CEO and president of CCBPI.

Located in General Trias, Cavite and set to be operational by Q1 of 2021, PETValue will employ the safest and most advanced technologies to process used PET plastic bottles, allowing an endless loop of recycling.

Its projected capacity, or the amount of used plastic bottles it can process, is 30,000 metric tons of

PET bottles per year, or equivalent to approximately 3 billion bottles.

“Through this investment, more jobs will be created for Filipinos — and this will also help uplift the livelihood of those within the waste value chain,” McGeown added.

In the Philippines alone, around 2.7 million metric tons of plastic waste is generated each year, and a huge portion of this finds its way into the environment, choking waterways, polluting the ecosystem and jeopardizing our biodiversity.

“Any time our packaging ends up anywhere it doesn’t belong is simply unacceptable to us,” said Jonah de Lumen-Pernia, Public Affairs and Sustainability director of Coca-Cola Philippines.