Sprite To Sell Cold Drink in Clear Bottles
Sprite shall no longer sell cold drinks in green bottles. After 60 years of green bottle packaging, Sprite will be now available in white or transparent bottles. The new change will come into effect from August 1. The company revealed that this move is a step towards acknowledging its environmental responsibility.
This step is not only taken for Sprite but for other drinking products of the company, including Fresca, Sigrams and Melo Yellow as well. All these drinks will now be available in clear drinks. The initiative, which will begin in North America, will slowly spread throughout the world, including India. The movement first took place in the Philippines. Coca Cola has already started using transparent bottles in some other countries of Europe and South Asia from 2019 itself. As of now Sprite is the third largest soft drink provider in the world.
Why the Transition from Green Bottles to Clear Ones?
The current packaging of sprite has a green polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Though green plastic can be recycled to make carpets or clothes, it cannot be used to make new bottles. Coca-Cola said that the material is changing from green to clear plastic to make way for recycling of the bottles. Green plastic is not environmentally friendly.Coloredd bottles have to be isolated, which increases their likelihood of entering into waste, might it be plastic or just waste. Also, green plastic is not much in demand, so recyclers can`t earn much from it either.
Coca-Cola aims to recycle every bottle by 2030
Coca-Cola launched its new initiative in 2018, named as “World Without West”. The campaign aims to collect and recycle every bottle by 2030. Half of the bottles Coca-Cola will be made during this period will be from recycled materials. Recycling will help the company save 9 million kilograms of plastic, which would have been produced otherwise, taking 2019 statistics into consideration. Coca Cola was named as the world’s most polluted brand in a report by an environmental firm named “Break Free from Plastic” in 2020. Coca-Cola uses 3 million tonnes of plastic annually. Coca Cola uses so much plastic in a year that every minute, 2 lakh bottles can be produced from plastic.
World is Moving Towards Sustainability
Coca-Cola’s move is not unprecedented in a world where talk of sustainability is widespread already. Many countries, including the US, Canada and India, are engaged in efforts to fight climate change. Japan and Korea have already prohibited coloured plastics two decades ago to eradicate plastic waste and endorse recycling.
To meet its sustainability goals. Coca-Cola will use bottles made of 100% recyclable plastic sold in the US and Canada. This will reduce the usage of plastic by about 10,000 tonnes of new plastic in the next year.
The Journey of Coca-Cola
From starting with only 9 glasses being sold in a year to 2 billion bottles being sold every day, Coca Cola has come a long way. Coca Cola was produced in 1886, when a pharmacist John Pemberton produced a drink in his lab made out of soda water. Everyone seemed to like the new drink. He decided to sell one glass for five cents. Pemberton ‘s accountant Frank Robinson named the mixture Coca-Cola. Due to the sanctions of the US, Coca-Cola cannot be purchased in only 2 countries, North Korea and Cuba though some reports reveal that the cold drink is secretly sold in North Korea. Coca-Cola’s annual revenue in 2021 was $38.66 billion, or Rs 3 lakh crore.
