After Sending an Empty PET Bottle, It Came Back as Coca-Cola

Wonderple Campaign 4th Participation Review

Photo by Coca-Cola

The "Plastic Used One More Time: Wonderful Campaign" conducted by Coca-Cola Korea was held for the fourth time. This campaign felt even more meaningful these days as the "plastic circular economy," which reduces the use of new plastics by reusing used plastics, is gaining global attention. Having participated in the campaign since 2020, I was also eagerly waiting to see how it would be conducted this year.

A few days after joining the campaign, a large box arrived at my home. Given the hot weather, I was confident about collecting PET bottles, and since this was my fourth time participating, I was fully familiar with the collection items and methods. It has almost become a habit now...

The box also had detailed instructions. Collect only transparent beverage PET bottles marked as colorless PET, empty all contents and wash them thoroughly, and neatly remove the PET bottle labels. After organizing the PET bottles according to these three methods, crush them and place them in the zero waste box. Although it seems simple in writing, the process of washing the contents or removing the labels could be easily forgotten if not careful.

At first, my family and friends who visited were puzzled by the large box, but after explaining the purpose of the campaign run by Coca-Cola, they nodded in agreement and expressed their willingness to participate. They were surprised to learn that the collected PET bottles could be turned into camping chairs, clothes, and bags. It seemed that people usually pay little attention to recycling and the term "recycled bottle" did not resonate easily. That’s why I hope such campaigns become more diverse and widespread.

Perhaps for this reason, this campaign felt more intuitive. The PET bottles I diligently collected?ta-da!?returned as Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Zero 1.25ℓ bottles. It felt as if the PET bottles I collected were reincarnated, arriving filled with cola. Normally, I would look at a cola bottle without much thought, but after the campaign, each bottle felt somehow more special.

According to Coca-Cola, through the third season held until last year, a total of 56 tons of plastic, equivalent to about 4.03 million 500mL water bottles, were collected. Starting this year, with the possibility of "bottle-to-bottle" recycling where used transparent beverage PET bottles are recycled into transparent beverage PET bottles, in this fourth season, the transparent PET bottles collected by participants were reborn as recycled PET (r-PET) material suitable for food containers. This provided an experience of resource circulation where transparent beverage PET bottles used in daily life were transformed into new resources.

Additionally, while maintaining product quality and safety, the package weight was reduced from the existing 41g to 36g through lightweighting, reducing the amount of virgin plastic used per bottle by about 21% (8.6g) compared to before.

Although this was first applied only to "commercial use" bottles, the day may come when the 500mL Coca-Cola bottles will also be included. Since this campaign is run by Coca-Cola, a beverage enjoyed by people of all ages, it felt especially meaningful. I hope the Wonderful Campaign continues until everyone participates and recycling becomes a habit. This is why I am looking forward to the fifth campaign next year.

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