Korea Coca-Cola Partners with Companies for Beverage PET Bottle Resource Recycling Cooperation

Emart, Black Yak, Yogiyo, SSG.com, Gmarket, WWF, TerraCycle, and Others
Collaborate to Expand 'Bottle-to-Bottle' Circular Economy

Korea Coca-Cola announced on the 14th that it has decided to collaborate with partners such as E-Mart, Black Yak, Yogiyo, SSG.com, Gmarket, WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), and TerraCycle to expand the resource circulation of beverage PET bottles.

Hong Yoon-hee, Secretary General of WWF (top row from left clockwise), Seo Min-seok, Head of Gmarket Division, Kang Joon-seok, Vice President of Black Yak, Yeom Seong-sik, Manager at SSG.com, Eric Kawabata, CEO of TerraCycle, Yoo Jae-hyuk, Vice President of Yogiyo, Jung Ki-sung, CEO of Coca-Cola Korea, and Lee Kyung-hee, Executive Director of E-Mart, are posing for a commemorative photo after signing a partnership to expand the 'Bottle-to-Bottle' initiative, which recycles transparent beverage PET bottles used in Korea back into beverage PET bottles.
[Photo by Coca-Cola Korea]

Along with Korea Coca-Cola, eight companies will join forces under the partnership to promote the expansion of the 'Bottle-to-Bottle' circular economy, where fully consumed transparent beverage PET bottles are reborn as PET bottles, and to raise consumer awareness about proper waste separation.

Bottle-to-Bottle is an ideal resource circulation method that recycles used beverage PET bottles into recycled raw materials through proper recycling and uses them again to manufacture beverage PET bottles, thereby reducing the use of virgin plastics and carbon emissions. In Korea, this became possible after the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety improved the system in 2021 to allow physical recycling of food containers, and in February of this year, they approved the first physical recycled raw materials for use in manufacturing food containers.

Last month, Korea Coca-Cola applied the 'Coca-Cola Recycled Bottle,' which contains 10% domestic recycled raw materials and achieves plastic lightweighting, to the existing Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Zero 1.25ℓ products, launching them as delivery channel exclusive products.

The eight companies also plan to launch Season 4 of the 'Plastic Used One More Time: ONETHEPL Campaign' to encourage consumers to practice proper beverage PET bottle separation in their daily lives and to experience the Bottle-to-Bottle circular economy.

Jung Ki-sung, CEO of Korea Coca-Cola, said, "We deeply agree that realizing a sustainable plastic ecosystem requires joint efforts with partners possessing expertise across various fields beyond a single company. While continuously introducing sustainable packaging centered on expanding the use of recycled raw materials, we will continue various activities with partners who share Coca-Cola’s vision to ensure that the Bottle-to-Bottle circular economy is successfully established in Korea."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.