According to the East African, Coca-Cola has started an initiative that addresses the issue of plastic bottle waste in Africa through a recycling project in operation in Kenya.
Coca Cola, along with two companies involved in the beverage industry -- Safepak and the Highlands Mineral Water Co. -- have formed a new company called PET Recycling Co. of Kenya to manage the PET plastics recycling project.
The goal of the project is to recycle 70 percent of the plastics containers sold by 2015.
The recycling company will work with Greenplast International, a recycler near Nairobi, Kenya, to crush the collected plastics and export the material to China. Greenplast currently operates several drop-off centers around Nairobi where people can take plastic bottles for recycling.
Representatives from the three companies, along with others, are supporting the recycling project.
The joint initiative has a target of collecting 4,200 metric tons at the Greenplast facility by 2015. The news article notes that in Kenya, the project could appease the government and environmentalists, which have been searching for ways to reduce the volume of plastic wastes, even including increasing duties on the product.
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