European soft drinks industry sets ambitions to make its plastic packaging more sustainable
By 2025 100% of soft drinks plastic packaging to be recyclable with PET bottles containing a minimum of 25% recycled content on average
Soft Drinks Europe announced a set of EU-wide ambitions to make the sector’s plastic packaging more sustainable. The ambitions aim to contribute towards building a circular model for plastic packaging by improving its recyclability, recycled content, collection, and reuse.
Beverage packaging is the most collected packaging in the EU and large soft drinks companies have been instrumental in driving up recycling rates by establishing and running many of the packaging recovery organisations across the EU.
The sector has already taken significant steps to make soft drinks packaging more sustainable and reduce its carbon footprint – including light-weighting programmes to reduce the amount of raw materials used; increasing the use of recycled materials and removing technical barriers to recyclability.
“Achieving circularity through optimal collection, recycling and use of recycled PET is a top priority for our industry,” explains UNESDA Director General, Sigrid Ligné. “UNESDA members want all their packaging, including plastics, to be collected and recycled and not discarded on our streets, oceans and waterways. To achieve this, packaging collection systems must be well designed, set-up and managed by industry. Improved collection and recycling, alongside greater