Coca-Cola Unveils Recycling Plans for Olympics

Coca-Cola UK has announced a plan to collect and recycle all the PET plastic bottles disposed of during both the London 2012 Olympics and the Paralympic Games.

To accomplish this, Coca-Cola is working with SITA UK, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games’ (LOCOG) recycling partner. Under the program, Coca-Cola UK and SITA UK will collect and recycle the PET plastic from Olympic Park, ultimately manufacturing around 80 million new Coke bottles that will be produced within six weeks of the closing ceremony.

The PET plastic will be recycled at Continuum Recycling, Coca-Cola Enterprises’ new joint venture recycling facility it recently established with the U.K. plastics recycler ECO Plastics.

Continuum Recycling, based in North Lincolnshire, U.K., is scheduled to open in early 2012. When the facility is fully operational, the production of food grade recycled PET plastic in the U.K. will increase from 35,000 metric tons in 2010 to more than 75,000 metric tons per year.