Coca-Cola Trials Turning Hard-to-Recycle Plastic Into Bottles
Coke’s biggest European bottler is backing a new technology that makes food-grade plastic out of landfill-bound waste
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Coca-Cola is trialing technology in Europethat turns hard-to-recycle plastic into new bottles, as part of its effort to meet its sustainability goals.
The company’s biggest European bottler, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, is funding a startup in the Netherlands that will produce food-grade recycled plastic from plastics that usually get sent to landfill or are incinerated—such as films, trays, clothing and colored packaging. It will create an additional source of recycled material. Current supplies of recycled plastic are costly and limited, which is keeping companies hooked on abundant and cheaper oil as a key ingredient in the production of packaging.
“This new technology is critical to improve access to recycled material for bottles,” said Wouter Vermeulen, Coca-Cola’s senior director of sustainability and public policy in Europe. “The Coca-Cola system is committed to reducing our dependency on oil for producing virgin packaging materials and promoting recycling.”
Coca-Cola is aiming to boost the proportion of recycled materials that make up its packaging to 50% by 2030. The soft-drinks group has achieved around 25% so far.
The company needs its bottlers to use more recycled materials to meet its own sustainability goals. “We simply do not have the necessary levels [of recycled plastic],” said Joe Franses, vice president of sustainability at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners.
The new process from startup CuRe Technology cleanses and partially breaks down plastics for reassembly into recycled material. Its so-called partial depolymerization method removes color from polyester, turning it into clear polyethylene terephthalate—or PET—pellets.A study commission by CuRe said its process results in roughly 65% lower greenhouse-gas emissions than oil-based new plastic production. Coca-Cola Europacific Partners invested in CuRe in 2020 and again this year.
CuRe has been sending samples to Coca-Cola in Atlanta for testing and, if it continues to meet quality standards, it is possible the recycled plastic could make its way to other markets.
“We are currently focused on scaling CuRe’s technology in the right way for use in Europe as a first priority, before looking at how this could benefit other markets,” Coca-Cola’s Mr. Vermeulen said.
By 2025, a plant is expected to produce around 25,000 metric tons of recycled plastic a year. Coca-Cola Europacific Partners will get a significant amount of that output but it will represent a fraction of its feedstock, currently around 200,000 metric tons of polyester a year in Europe. If the factory meets expectations, the bottler will build a larger plant before the end of the decade.
Packaging represents around 40% of Coca-Cola Europacific Partners’ carbon footprint, largely because of its use of oil-based virgin plastic. It aims to stop using oil to produce plastic bottles by 2030. Last year, almost half of its bottles were made from recycled plastic and bioplastics.
By the turn of the next decade, Mr. Franses at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners envisions technology such as CuRe’s supplying around 25% of the bottling company’s needs while traditional recycling methods will satisfy about 70%. He hopes recycled plastic supplied by CuRe’s method to be on par or not significantly more expensive than current recycled plastic, which can be 50% more costly than plastic made from oil.
“I’m not going to stand here in 2023 and say we’ve got a full road map that is going to take us there,” Mr. Franses said. “What I am really confident on is that the business has made the right investments.”
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2 min
In high-end homes, the most telling upgrades are no longer the obvious ones.
It’s not just the marble in the kitchen or the view from the terrace. Increasingly, it’s the rooms you don’t see, and how well they actually work.
The laundry is a perfect example.
Once treated as a purely functional space, it is now being reconsidered by architects and homeowners alike as a zone where performance, hygiene and design need to align.
And for buyers operating at the top end of the market, that shift is less about aesthetics and more about control.
Because in a home where everything is curated, inefficiency stands out.
ASKO’s latest “Laundry Care 2.0” range leans directly into that mindset, positioning the laundry as a long-term investment rather than a basic appliance purchase.
Built on more than 75 years of engineering, the Scandinavian brand’s latest systems focus on durability, precision and what is becoming a defining luxury in modern homes: quiet.
One of the more telling innovations is something most buyers would never think to question until it fails.
Traditional washing machines rely on rubber seals that trap dirt and bacteria over time. ASKO replaces that entirely with a steel solution designed to maintain a cleaner, more hygienic drum.
It’s not a headline feature. But it is exactly the kind of detail buyers tend to notice.
Then there is the issue of noise.
As open-plan living has become standard in prestige homes, the background hum of appliances has gone from unnoticed to intrusive.
ASKO’s suspension system is engineered to minimise vibration almost entirely, allowing machines to run without disrupting the wider home environment.
In practical terms, that means a load can run late at night without carrying through the house. In lifestyle terms, it means the home functions as intended.
The same thinking extends to the drying process. Uneven loads, tangled fabrics and repeat cycles are treated as inefficiencies rather than inconveniences, with technology designed to keep garments moving evenly and reduce wear over time.
For buyers, this is where the value proposition sharpens.
It is not about having more features. It is about removing friction.
Less maintenance. Less noise. Less time spent correcting what should have worked the first time.
In that sense, modern laundry is no longer just a utility. It is a reflection of how a home performs behind the scenes, and whether it lives up to the expectations set by everything else.
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