World Without Waste

World without waste

WORKING TOWARDS A WORLD WITHOUT WASTE

We believe every package has value and life beyond its initial use and that it should be collected and recycled into a new package. Together with our suppliers and partners, we are working to design more sustainable packaging and take action to ensure that our packaging does not end up as waste.

We have a set of commitments and action plans that are making good progress, as part of our vision for a World Without Waste.


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100% recyclability

99.9% of our primary packaging is already recyclable.
We will make 100% of our primary packaging fully recyclable by 2025.

50% recycled PET

We will increase the percentage of recycled PET in our bottles to 35% by 2025 and to 50% by 2030. In our EU countries, we plan to reach 50% rPET by 2025.

In 2021, 10% of our PET was from renewable or recycled materials.

100% collection

We will recover 75% of our primary packaging for recycling by 2025 and 100% by 2030.

46% of the bottles and cans that we placed on the market in 2021 were either refilled or collected for recycling.



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We are eliminating unnecassary packaging by light-weighting primary packaging and removing shrink film from multi-packs.

In 2020, we made our first steps towards eliminating single use plastic film from multi-pack cans using KeelClip™ technology. 

By moving to KeelClip™ and carton packs, we will remove hard to recycle plastic film from our supply chain.

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We will expand reusable packaging in ‘refillable’ and in ‘dispensed’ formats from their current levels of 13% and 4% respectively.

As members of UNESDA, we support the circular packaging vision, which pledges that EU beverage packaging will be fully circular by 2030: 90% collected, PET bottles made from 100% recycled and/or renewable material, and increased use of refillables.

Today, just over 13% of the drinks that we sell are in refillable containers and 4% are sold through dispensed formats (i.e. fountain or freestyle machines).


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We are innovating to deliver new sustainable packaging solutions through partnerships and R&D. For example, in June 2021, we launched a limited market trial with a new paper bottle prototype for AdeZ in Hungary, in partnership with the Coca-Cola Company and the Paper Bottle Company.


Our 2020 Progress

99.9%

of our primary packaging is already recyclable

46%

of our bottles and cans were collected for reuse or recycling

10%

of our PET was from renewable or recycled materials

Towards a World Without Waste

Click here to discover more about what we are doing to make our packaging more sustainable.

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More than a million plastic bottles are sold throughout the world every minute, and most, 91%, are not recycled. All plastic packaging can and should have more than one life. The beverage industry, including Coca-Cola HBC, has an obligation to take significant action to solve this problem.

Louise Sullivan,

Head of Packaging Recovery, Coca-Cola HBC


We strive to avoid and minimize food loss and food waste across our entire value chain, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3. Preventing food loss helps us preserve water and other natural resources, avoid related carbon emissions, and mitigate the related social and economic effects in agriculture.

 
Food waste and loss targets

Our target to tackle food waste and loss across our activities and operations is:

  • to decrease our absolute food losses (in dry matter) by 30% by 2025 compared to our 2019 baseline despite volume growth, an increase in portfolio/beverage categories, and expansion to emerging markets, and further reduce by 40% by 2030 vs. 2019.

Food loss and waste coming at our manufacturing sites are part of the overall waste management process. We strive to reach 100% recycled waste and have zero waste to landfill. We have reduced the percentage of manufacturing waste going to landfill significantly: in 2021, only 3.2% of our manufacturing waste went to landfilled, while in 2015 10.1% (this means in 2021 96.8% of total manufacturing waste was recycled or used for alternative usage).

To achieve our waste reduction targets, we apply the waste hierarchy principles (waste pyramid): prevent/avoid, reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, waste disposal.

Programmes and processes to prevent, avoid and minimize food waste and loss

Our aim is to ensure efficient use and control of raw and packaging materials, and our operations in order to minimize all losses and waste, including food. It starts with the demand and supply chain planning process, batch management and traceability of the materials and products, quality control of all materials, semi-finished and finished products, control of the non-conforming products, inventory management across the value chain, engagement with suppliers, customers, distributors, co-packers, and other partners.

Within production efficiency management, our teams on the production floor are measuring and analyzing the losses from their production lines and the overall line efficiency on a daily basis, using this knowledge to set actions for improvement.

Expired products are the biggest part of the food loss we generate. In order to minimise them, we have introduced a process called product age management. It allows us to set up a goal for each stage of the product life cycle. In the marketplace, with the Product Freshness programme, we control the expiry date and age of our products and thus minimise food waste and finish goods write off. We check and monitor the age and take measures at sales area and customer level.

We monitor the product age in our warehouses on a monthly basis, then we follow up the delivery age of the products with our customers and we monitor our product age (whether the products are within their defined primary age or expired) on customers’ shelves monthly as a last point of our checks. This gives us good insights on product rotation time, leads to improved planning of the product age at every step, and reduces the amount of expired products in the marketplace.

As we have implemented warehouse age monitoring on a monthly basis, and Total Age Management (TAM), we now have the opportunity to control our food loss and waste through S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) meetings, where products in warehouses close to expiration can be managed to avoid food waste through specific promotions, product sampling, internal consumption or charity donation.

Also based on market insights and demand levels, we can adjust our productions in the direction of food waste and loss avoidance through effective planning and sales processes.

Food waste and loss measuring

At production sites (plant level), we measure and separately collect each type of food loss (raw materials, manufacturing process, warehouse activities, storage, transportation). Each category of food loss is recorded in our specialised software and monitored at least monthly.

At the retail level (our customers), we measure the age of every finished good with our Total Age Monitoring (TAM) programme, and we take measures to avoid expired products.

Food waste and loss reporting and performance review

We utilize our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for reporting the food losses/waste. It is part of the overall business loss software solution. All food losses/waste are traced monthly, per country and per reason. More than 20 different reasons are assigned in our system for any business loss, and we use these reason codes for performing a deep analysis. As part of the monthly performance review, every function evaluates the absolute number of losses (in units and monetary terms), its percentage against the total volume of product sold, the trend vs. the last reporting period and vs. target, the reasons and root causes, and develops action plans for reduction. Annual targets are set at the country level.

Alternative use

In case food waste from expired products is unavoidable, we evaluate if these products are fit for human consumption and we work with different charity organisations and partners to redistribute them (e.g., FoodCloud, Fareshare, Too Good To Go).

If products cannot be used for human consumption, they go through anaerobic digestion, either in our own wastewater treatment facilities or at external wastewater treatment facilities. The product is crushed, with the liquid part recycled (treated to the levels supporting aquatic life) and the remaining part (sludge, which is the dry food loss), after further treatment, used for alternative purposes such as composting for agricultural needs or incineration for energy recovery and biogas/biofuel.

In Switzerland, we’re fighting against food waste in partnership with “Too Good To Go” start-up. They offer an app that connects consumers with food suppliers and turns them into what is known as #wastewarriors. Beverages approaching their best-before date within the next few weeks can be bought through their app at a bargain price. 

Example of good practice in our Irish operations:

Food loss and waste data

Unit of measure

2019

2020

2021

Target 2021

Target 2025

Target 2030

Total weight of all food loss/waste
in dry matter

tonnes

16,253

14,419

11,805

<13,000

30% reduction vs. 2019

40% 
reduction
vs. 2019

Total weight of food loss/waste used for alternative purposes
(in dry matter)

tonnes

1,463

1,571

1,458

     

Redistributed for anaerobic congestion
(on-site waste water treatment or external waste water treatment)

tonnes 132 147 134      

Redistributed for land application (composting)

tonnes 214 455 158      

Redistributed for energy recovery (biogas/biofuel)

tonnes 1,117 969 1,142      

Redistributed for human consumption

tonnes - - 25      

Food loss/waste intensity per tonne
of product sold

tonnes of food losses per tonne
of sold beverages

0.0017

0.0023

0.0014

<0.01