"Every locally produced 500ml Coca-Cola® Trademark beverage or bonaqua® water (1.5L or below) you enjoy, there's a good chance the bottle is now made from locally recycled plastic," shared Karlijn in t Veld, Vice President of Operations for Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Mongolia at The Coca-Cola Company. "This isn't just about refreshing the world; it's about making a tangible difference for a better Hong Kong, one bottle at a time."
This holistic local approach is vital for Hong Kong, which faces unique challenges in managing beverage packaging waste. It is made possible by the significant investment by Swire Coca-Cola, one of the world's largest Coca-Cola bottlers, in New Life Plastics Limited (NLP). As Hong Kong's first food-grade-ready plastic bottle recycling facility, NLP is designed to process up to 2 million plastic beverage bottles daily. However, it currently processes less than 800,000 daily, highlighting the critical need for increased collection efforts from the community.
Understanding Local Recycling Landscape
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%).
Coca-Cola's Continued Commitment in Hong Kong
Consumer preference for sustainable products is clear, with 63.56% prioritizing 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- To encourage packaging reuse, Returnable Glass Bottles for key brands like Coca-Cola®, Coca-Cola® No Sugar, Sprite®, Fanta®, Schweppes® and bonaqua® have been reintroduced in 2022, supported by a self-managed bottle return mechanism.
