Coke Reusues

Advertising doesn’t get much greener than this: Coca-Cola and the World Wildlife Fund have unveiled a new 60-by-60-foot billboard in the Philippines that’s covered in Fukien tea plants, which absorb air pollution. Each plant can absorb up to 13 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. “This billboard helps alleviate air pollution within its proximate areas as it can absorb a total of 46,800 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, on estimate,” says botanist Anthony Gao.

News Source: ADWEEK

In February 2011, The Coca-Cola Company and H.J. Heinz Company announced a strategic partnership that enables Heinz to produce its ketchup bottles using Coca-Cola’s breakthrough PlantBottle™ packaging. The PET plastic bottles are made partially from plants and have a lower reliance on non-renewable resources compared with traditional PET plastic bottles.

News Source: The Coca-Cola Company

A new recycling initiative, for the next couple of weeks, is offering recycling boxes for trial in the homes of customers at Asda in Bishop, the initiative is a partnership with Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd, is being offered to customers that purchase three two litre Coca Cola products, with the customers receiving boxes made of recycled plastic bottles.

The lack of space in most kitchens makes it difficult to recycle even though most people have good intentions says research by CCE. Recycling director, Patrick McGuirk says a light bulb can be powered for six hours from recycling just on plastic bottle and the hope is that the boxes will them to recycle more cans and bottles in the home. A close look will be taken as to how the initiative works and affects the habits of recycling by people.

News Source: USE IT AGAIN

Coca-Cola Israel launched an innovative and unique project this month: A Pop Up Store for recycled products. At a central location in Tel Aviv, the company opened a special shop offering a collection of products made from recycled Coca Cola bottles and cans. The campaign invites customers to bring bottles and cans to the store where they can purchase recycled products for bottles and a small additional price.

The store is part of Coca-Cola Israel’s “Give it Back” campaign.

News Source: Promarket News

You wouldn’t know it from looking at them on the grocery store shelf (and you’d need carbon-14 dating tools to make an accurate identification), but Coca-Cola‘s recyclable PlantBottle PET plastic bottles are an innovative and ground-breaking step in the food and beverage industry. Up to 30 percent of the PlantBottle materials are derived from plants, and the company’s goal is to eventually roll out bottles that are made 100 percent from renewable raw materials, and still fully recyclable.

News Source: smartplanet

Four months and 8,000 nautical miles after setting sail from Sausalito, California, the highly unconventional craft Plastiki completed its Pacific crossing to arrive in Sydney harbor this morning. The catamaran–constructed from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles–and its unlikely journey underscored the costs and consequences of plastic waste, much of which winds up in the ocean.

Environmentalist, Adventure Ecology founder, and expedition leader David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, conceived the voyage as a means to inspire others to rethink the resources they consume, particularly the single-use plastics that have become a nearly ubiquitous part of modern life.

News Source: National Geographic

Not content with just improving the carbon footprint of its bottles, Coca-Cola has launched a new program that will see it reuse and recycle displays for its products as well.

Called, aptly, the “Give It Back” rack, are display stands made from recyclable cardboard. But, as the name implies, Coke is actually encouraging retailers to return the racks once they are empty so that they can be reused or, in some instances, recycled.

“Coca-Cola recovered 400 million pounds of cans and bottles in the U.S. in 2010, yet we want to do more,” VP of business development Gary Wygant said. “By creating a 100 percent recyclable merchandise display rack, Coca-Cola is asking grocery and convenience stores to join our sustainability efforts by returning or recycling our racks, just like we ask consumers to return or recycle our product packaging.”

The cardboard racks are currently being tested in select locations, but, provided everything goes well, will become more widely available towards the end of the year. In addition to cardboard, Coke is also experimenting with other materials, such as recycled PET plastic.

News Source: Good Clean Tech

Situated outside a Kroger in Arlington, TX, is a new structure that resembles a slimmed down drive-thru restaurant or the world’s longest ATM. It’s actually the first of Coca-Cola’s “Reimagine” recycling machines that allows customers to dump aluminum cans and #1 PET plastic containers in all at the same time.

A statement on the Reimagine site says the company is hoping to add more of these units to shopping centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the coming months, and that it will look at the data in early 2011 to figure out future plans for expansions.

News Source: The Consumerist

Emeco, which calls itself “the Aluminum Chair Company,” will formally unveil its first all-plastic chair at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile Wednesday in Milan. Called the 111 Navy chair, it is produced from 111 (or more) recycled Coca-Cola bottles. It will be sold in the U.S. through Design Within Reach beginning next month.

It took two years to develop the 111 Navy, a replica of the 1944 classic all-aluminum Navy 1006 chair, which Emeco developed for ships during World War II. Legend holds that the contours of the seat were inspired by pinup Betty Grable’s shapely derriere.

The 111 Navy is a hollow one-piece injection-molded chair made from 60% recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic with glass fiber reinforcement. It weighs in at just under 13 pounds, nearly twice as heavy as the 7-pound aluminum version.

Happily, it costs almost half as much — only $230 compared with the $415 made-in-the-U.S.-from-recycled-aluminum version. Emeco and Coca-Cola hope to recycle some 3 million bottles annually to produce the chairs.

Of the six available colors, the Coca-Cola red, snow and flint gray can be used indoors or out. The grass, persimmon and charcoal may fade in direct sun and are not recommended for outdoors.

The 111 Navy sits on feet with semi-frosted transparent polycarbonate glides that give it a floating appearance. The semi-gloss finish and a subtle texture give the surface a feel somewhere between an eggshell and the skin of an orange, says Magnus Breitling, Emeco’s director of product management. “It is more temperature-friendly,” he adds. “It is not as cool to the touch as the aluminum chair and doesn’t get as warm in the sun.”

News Source: LATimesBlog

CCS student Andrew Kim’s Coke bottle redesign is an ambitious take on the iconic bottle, going square in the name of eco-friendliness. The new bottle shape would take up far less space in shipping pallets per bottle, and a push-up in the bottom large enough to accommodate the cap of the bottle beneath it would enable stacking. Said cap is offset for better drinkability.

Another interesting design feature is that underneath the label, the bottle is ribbed so that it can compress like an accordion, taking up even less space when it’s time to go into the recycling truck.

News Source: Core77