Coca-Cola Signs First Plastic Pact for Pacific Region Towards a Circular Economy

18 May, 2021: The ANZPAC Plastics Pact has today launched in the Pacific region – uniting leading businesses, NGOs, and governments across New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands behind a series of ambitious 2025 targets to eliminate plastic waste.

The Plastic Pact is a global initiative of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and Coca-Cola in the South Pacific is proud to be a founding partner. Brand owners, industry, governments and NGOs are coming together across the Pacific region to tackle plastic and turn a vision of a circular economy for plastic into a reality.

Rob Priest, Vice President, Coca-Cola South Pacific says: “We do not want to see plastic packaging end up where it does not belong, – on the beaches, waterways or landfill anywhere in the Pacific. This is a major and urgent challenge but also a solvable problem if we design and support a circular economy.

“As part of our World Without Waste commitment globally, and in the Pacific region, our goal is to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030. We can make even greater progress throughout the Pacific Islands by working with other members across the private and public sector as part of the ANZPAC Plastics Pact,” he says.

“The Plastics Pact will work to fundamentally transform our response to plastic by eliminating the plastics we don’t need, innovating to ensure that the plastics we do need are reusable, recyclable, or compostable, and circulating the plastic we use, keeping it in the economy and out of the environment.

“In the Pacific region there is enormous potential for business, policymakers and NGOs to come together and help address the waste and recycling challenges,” says Priest.

Coca-Cola Oceania Pacific Islands Operations Manager, Jane Bennett, says: “As a beverage company, we believe it is our responsibility to have a long-term commitment to the sustainability of our packaging. For 22 years our bottling partner, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners Fiji, has operated a buy-back scheme in Fiji to help prevent bottles and cans going to landfill and drive positive recycling behaviour.

“In addition, in 2019 Fiji became the first country in the South Pacific to launch Sprite in a clear bottle, rather than the traditional green coloured bottle. With clear PET plastic, our bottles have a higher chance of becoming another bottle again and again, creating a circular solution for plastic,” she says.

As a signatory Coca-Cola, alongside all members, will work toward four actionable targets by 2025:

1. Eliminate unnecessary and problematic plastic packaging through redesign, innovation and alternative (reuse) delivery models.
2. 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging by 2025.
3. Increase plastic packaging collected and effectively recycled by 25% for each geography within the ANZPAC region.
4. Average of 25% recycled content in plastic packaging across the region.

To read more about The Coca-Cola Company’s ‘World Without Waste’ goals, visit https://www.coca-colacompany.com/au/news/world-without-waste-coca-cola-progress.

Further information: www.anzpac.org.au.