Swire Coca-Cola, the bottling partner of the American drinks maker, has become the first company in Hong Kong to use locally sourced recycled plastic for its products, giving a boost to the city’s circular economy efforts.
New Life Plastics, the city’s first food-grade ready plastic bottle recycling facility, has started supplying Swire Coca-Cola with locally sourced recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) needed to bottle its drinks. Until now, the drinks company sourced rPET from overseas. Coca-Cola launched its namesake fizzy drink in recycled plastic bottles in April last year.
Swire Coca-Cola invested in New Life Plastics in December 2022. The company opened its PET recycling facility the same year in EcoPark in Tuen Mun in the New Territories.
“Since New Life Plastic started recycling locally collected plastic bottles into food grade rPET, we have been buying rPET and turning it into preforms,” said Richard Gould, general manager for Swire Coca-Cola in Hong Kong, at a launch event on Tuesday, referring to the test-tube-shaped, intermediate product that is blown into its final bottle shape.
As of this month, Coca-Cola started using only locally sourced rPET for all its 500ml and 1.5-litre PET bottles in Hong Kong, said Iris Lee, Coca-Cola’s general manager for Hong Kong and Macau.
