The €100K Coca-Cola HBC Sustainability Challenge was a startup challenge designed to identify the most innovative packaging and packaging recovery technologies in the CPG space.

The Challenge ran from January until April 2022.

The top startups presented to the Coca-Cola HBC Executive Leadership Team in April 2022.  

The final winner was Greenbig, a French startup; Greenbig has developed “b:bot”, a Reverse Vending Machine (RVM) to collect plastic and turn it into rPET flakes at the point of collection, which can then be used to create rPET plastic bottles.

 

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Congratulations to Greenbig – we said at the start of the challenge that we are looking for startups that can help our sustainable packaging journey – Greenbig have an out of the box solution that is simply fantastic.

Zoran bogdanovic CEO, Coca-Cola HBC
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The beauty of the challenge is that it has given us access to an array of brilliant startups and ideas. Conversations are already underway with several of these startups to take their ideas to the next level with Coca-Cola HBC.

Yannis Stamoulis Group Head of Venturing

PET Smartbin
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GreenBig has developed b:bot, a disruptive solution to collect & recycle PET bottles.

  • b:bot transforms the PET bottles into flakes on site and also sorts them by colour.
  • 30M bottles collected in 2021
  • 300+ machines produced with 500 additional machines planned to be produced in 2022
  • High quality rPET
  • 95% of collected PET becomes new PET bottles while consuming less CO2 and water
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The Finalists

Notpla develops biodegradable, edible beverage and food satches from seaweed

Touchcode develops smart labelling solutions 

THEO AG builds autonomous delivery robots with application in waste collection

Cuploop develops a digital packaging recovery system using Reverse Vending Machines and resusable packaging

Stabil Plastik develops tertiary packaging from upcycled plastic waste

Candam enables on-the-street waste recycling collection through retrofittable packaging scanners

Plannalto develops paper bottles

Kleen Hub helps businesses transition to reusable packaging through digitalization

Sensi develops Reverse Vending Machines using Visual AI technology

Pulp Pak designs and licenses technology for paper bottles