More than 10 million bottles collected from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games have been recycled, according to the Coca-Cola System in Great Britain (Coca-Cola).

As part of its sponsorship deal, Coca-Cola recycled over 10.5 million bottles collected from Olympic venues at its new £15 million Continuum Recycling facility, a joint venture with ECO Plastics. Within six weeks of disposal, the clear plastic bottles were made into recycled material that went towards manufacturing 42 million new bottles (each containing 25 per cent recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET)).

Coca-Cola Enterprises has now announced that it will also be establishing a new joint venture in France with PET recycler APPE to boost the capacity of its plastics reprocessing facility by 70 percent and recycle 20,000 additional tons of plastic into food-grade packaging per year.

Recycling education

Coca-Cola also informed members of the public visiting the Games about the speeds with which a plastic bottles could be recycled into a new bottle. Research published by Nielsen shows that 70 per cent of 222 visitors surveyed at London 2012 said that learning this information would make them ‘more likely to recycle at home’.

“Developing a best practice waste and recycling system… contributed to making London 2012 our most sustainable sponsorship activation ever”, said Jon Woods, General Manager, Coca-Cola Great Britain & Ireland.

According to a new report published by strategy consultancy Good Business on behalf of Coca-Cola, the company’s sustainable actions included:

o Served all drinks at Olympic venues in recyclable plastic bottles that contained up to 25 per cent rPET and served Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coke Zero drinks in ‘PlantBottle’ packaging (that contains up to 22.5 per cent plant-based material).

o Invested in a low-carbon warehouse and used HFC-free coolers with LED lighting, and 14 biogas trucks to cut the carbon footprint of its London 2012 distribution system by a third.

o Used recycled materials in its branded products, from staff uniforms to building materials and licensed merchandise.

o Became the first major corporation to be independently verified as applying the new ISO standard for sustainable event management.

Coca-Cola also announced this week that it will be launching an ethnographic study with the University of Exeter into exploring how consumer behaviour change strategies can improve at-home recycling rates. The study will undertake research with households in Great Britain and France over a 10-month period, as according to the corporation, the plastic bottle recycling rates in these two countries remain below ‘most other’ European countries, despite growing awareness of environmental concerns among consumers.

Some environmentalists have praised Coca-Cola’s efforts, with David Nussbaum, CEO of WWF UK, saying: “The work Coca-Cola has undertaken to reduce its impact at the Games, and the lengths to which it has gone to use the power of its brand to engage others and ensure its actions have a lasting impact is to be commended and sets a standard for future corporate sponsorship of international events."

However, others have been critical of the 'corporate Games', which saw large multinational companies, some with poor environmental records, become major Olympic sponsors. Sandra Bell, Food Campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "London's Olympic bid was built on the promise of a low-carbon games that has quickly been broken.

"Three big multinational brands will profit from a large proportion of food sold, creaming off profits that should be supporting local businesses and British farmers that are already going beyond these standards to produce food without trashing the planet."

According to the Worldwatch Institute's Blog, nearly 80 percent of waste created at the Olympic Games comes from food waste and packaging.