MCS Coca-Cola Launches a Campaign to Recycle 100 Percent of Its Plastic Packaging Waste
To mark Global Recycling Day on March 18, MCS Coca-Cola is highlighting its Waste Plastic Packaging Recycling Project. As an active participant in the food supply chain, The Coca-Cola Company has pledged to help collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one it sells, and is calling on its bottling and sales companies around the world to join that effort responsibly and deliver results.
To mark Global Recycling Day on March 18, MCS Coca-Cola is highlighting its Waste Plastic Packaging Recycling Project.
As an active participant in the food supply chain, The Coca-Cola Company has pledged to help collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one it sells, and is calling on its bottling and sales companies around the world to join that effort responsibly and deliver results. In support of that call, MCS Coca-Cola has begun working toward a target of recycling 100 percent of its waste plastic packaging by 2030 and reducing the weight of its packaging.
As part of this campaign, MCS Coca-Cola has been implementing Mongolia’s first plastic packaging recycling plant project since 2018, together with its supplier TML LLC. The plant will recycle 20,000 tonnes of waste plastic a year and has the capacity to turn it into raw material of a quality equivalent to the plastic used in beverage packaging. The project has also created more than 110 new jobs in collecting, sorting and recycling plastic packaging.
MCS Coca-Cola also began work on reducing the weight of its packaging in 2019, and last year achieved a saving of 147 tonnes by making its plastic bottles lighter. This is another concrete example of the company delivering on its environmental commitments.
L. Myagmarjav, Chief Executive Officer of MCS Coca-Cola, said: “Even though private companies have commissioned a recycling plant on their own initiative and with their own funds, the informed, conscious and active participation of consumers in sorting, collecting and recycling their waste is the key to the success of this project to save our planet from waste.”
Going forward, MCS Coca-Cola will work continuously to engage the public in sorting and collecting waste packaging, and to build a comprehensive system for collecting waste plastic packaging through its customers and retail stores.
From the earliest days of humankind, people have used natural materials such as wood, stone, leaves and grass to store and transport food for a period of time. As tools became more refined, packaging improved and people accumulated the knowledge needed to keep food for longer.
From the 19th century, with the beginning of oil production in the 1800s, food packaging became lighter, thinner and transparent, ensured food safety and met a wide range of needs — but because it breaks down slowly in nature and lasts a long time, it has always carried the risk of creating waste.
The vast supply of packaging across the 19th and 20th centuries bred an indifferent “there is always more, just throw it away” attitude among consumers, leading to open dumping in the environment and single-use habits, until these long-lasting, lightweight packages had accumulated to the point of polluting rivers, seas and oceans.
In the 21st century, the sign that humankind needs to change its way of life is that people now dispose of packaging responsibly and take an active part in the recycling chain.