19 November 2020

COCA-COLA ANNOUNCES FIRST-GENERATION PROTOTYPE OF ITS RECYCLABLE PAPER BOTTLE

Coca-Cola recently announced that it is working to create a bottle made 100% from paper, which the company says may help it achieve a "World Without Waste."

Coca-Cola's World Without Waste stated goal: "We aim to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030, while also substantially reducing our use of virgin packaging materials, and only using packaging materials that are 100% recyclable."

Coca-Cola said that it is working with Paboco and the three other companies in the Paboco Pioneer Community and is now at the stage of a first-generation prototype of its recyclable paper bottle.

Paboco, based in Slangerup (near Copenhagen), Denmark, got its start in 2019 and is a joint venture between BillerudKorsnäs and bottle manufacturing specialist Alpla.

"Our vision is to create a paper bottle than can be recycled like any other type of paper, and this prototype is the first step on the way to achieving this," says Stijn Franssen, EMEA R&D Packaging Innovation Manager at Coca-Cola, who is working on the project. "A paper bottle opens up a whole new world of packaging possibilities, and we are convinced that paper packaging has a role to play in the future."

According to Coca-Cola, a lot of work still must be done to achieve this vision of a recyclable paper bottle. The first-generation paper bottle still contains some plastic.

"This first-generation paper bottle prototype still consists of a paper shell with a plastic closure and a plastic liner inside," Franssen says. "The plastic we use is made from 100% recycled plastic that can be recycled again after use. But our vision is to create a paper bottle that can be recycled like any paper. The next step is to find a solution to create a bottle without the plastic liner."