14 DAY TRIAL // Only recently, Coca-Cola Enterprises has made it public news that, hoping to make further progress in terms of becoming a low-carbon, zero-waste company, it will invest as much as €6.5 million ($8.38 million) in a French recycling plant.
Moreover, it will also fund a series of studies intended to find ways of getting consumers to play their part in recycling more of the plastic bottles that hit the markets in Great Britain and in France.
As explained on the official website of this company, Coca-Cola Enterprises is to enter a joint venture with the French PET recycler APPE, their goal being to up the latter's plastic reprocessing capacity by 70%.
In raw plastic bottles numbers, this increased reprocessing capacity will translate into an extra 390 million PET bottles entering the recycling chain on a yearly basis.
Just for the record, said recycling facility in France will also have to contribute with €3.5 million ($4.51 million) to this project, yet it is quite obvious that Coca-Cola Enterprises will provide most of the money.
Commenting on this partnership, the Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, John F. Brock, explained how, “Our goal to lead our industry in sustainable packaging and recycling means we must support and promote improvements throughout our value chain.”
Given the fact that highly efficient recycling facilities are pretty much pointless if those running them do not have enough materials to recycle, Coca-Cola Enterprises is to also fund several studies meant to bring forth a better understanding of consumer behavior in terms on green-oriented actions.
Thus, the company wishes to see what can be done in order to up at-home recycling rates in Great Britain and France, and thus make sure ever more plastic bottles enter the recycling chain.
“Our approach will be to work intensively with households to understand how recycling and waste behaviors have developed and how the dynamics within family units influence such everyday practices."
"In this way, we will work alongside households to co-create strategies to embed sustainable recycling patterns in the future,” explained Dr. Stewart Barr, presently working as Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Exeter.