Keep It Going festival initiative recycles enough to save 162 tonnes of greenhouse emissions

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

This summer 156 volunteers from vinspired and Coca-Cola Enterprises rolled up their sleeves and got stuck into a pilot recycling initiative at a range of high profile festivals across the UK.  The result: more than 18 tonnes of bottles and cans were recycled and over 550,000 members of the public engaged in the process.

• 18 tonnes of PET plastic and aluminum cans recycled by Coca-Cola Enterprises
• 92,340 PET bottles swapped for 9,000 items of limited edition festival "swag"

As part of the scheme, the volunteers ran a Coca-Cola Recycle Garden where festival-goers could swap used plastic bottles for limited edition festival essentials made out of recycled PET.1 The idea proved so popular that each day kicked off with long queues of campers armed with bags full of empty bottles ready to swap.

In total more than 8,000 festival goers visited the Coca-Cola Recycle Gardens and swapped 92,340 PET bottles for 9,000 items of limited edition festival "swag".  Up for grabs at the 'Swap for Swag' shops were festival essentials like rain ponchos, torches and (a rare site at festivals) clean T-shirts - all made using recycled PET.

During each event, festival-goers could see the Recycle Garden grow as the bottles they had swapped for swag were crushed into bales and made into useable garden furniture - creating a space to sit and relax.

In order to make sure recycling was an easy and accessible process, highly visible recycling points were dotted around the festival sites for people to drop their cans and bottles.  These were then collected by the volunteers and recycling partner RECOUP, and sent into closed loop recycling, ready to be turned into a new bottle or into recycled material for new products.

The Coca-Cola Recycle Garden and 'Swap for Swag' shop were rolled out at eight events in 2010: The Isle of Wight Festival, V Festival, Sonisphere, Bloodstock, Creamfields, Wakestock, Epsom Derby and South of England Show.  Such was the scheme's success that plans are in place to extend it in the UK in 2011.

Coca-Cola Enterprises Recycling Director, Patrick McGuirk said:

"This year has proved that music festivals are a great place to engage people in recycling.  The 'Swap for Swag' shop has been a great tool to show people that a used bottle has a multitude of second uses and that their recycling really can make a difference.

"The young volunteers from vinspired and from CCE were hugely impressive, with their energy and commitment to the recycling initiative.  They did a great job in engaging festival-goers and ramping up enthusiasm for recycling.

"We want every festival-goer to leave at the end of the weekend committed to being a recycler for the rest of their life. It's inspiring to see the positive reaction that met our teams of volunteers at every festival this summer.

"We're already looking into how we can build on this success for 2011 and want to develop new partnerships to extend the scheme even further at music and sports events."

ENDS

Notes to editors

1 PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) is a recyclable plastic that is commonly used for carbonated beverage and water bottles.

The Coca Cola Recycle Garden and Swap for Swag festival initiative is part of Coca-Cola Enterprises' Keep It Going programme which, in partnership with Recoup and WRAP, has set up recycling points in public spaces across the UK. The scheme is already ahead of target, with over 80 permanent recycling zones currently in place.  These are helping people recycle on the go in shopping centres, hospitals, theme parks and transport hubs.

For more information contact:
Elisabeth Middlemas at Coca-Cola Enterprises press office
Tel: 020 7009 3802
Email: elisabeth.middlemas@3-monkeys.co.uk

About Coca-Cola Enterprises:
Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc. is the world's third-largest independent Coca-Cola bottler. CCE is the sole licensed bottler for products of The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) in Belgium, continental France, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.

In Great Britain (GB) Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd (CCE) employs around 4,500 people across England, Scotland and Wales at manufacturing sites, regional offices and depots.

CCE is committed to minimising the environmental impact of its products and operations, with a particular focus on sustainable packaging, water stewardship, and energy and climate protection.

Six of CCE's manufacturing sites meet ISO14001 certification, the highest international standard for environmental management.  CCE has reduced its energy usage ratio across manufacturing operations in GB by 21% since 2001 and more than 99% of waste at sites is now recovered or recycled.

All of CCE's glass bottles are 100% recyclable and contain an average of 30% recycled materials; all plastic bottles are made from PET (polyethylene teraphthalate) and are 100% recyclable, and all CCE cans are made from 100% recyclable aluminium and contain around 50% recycled aluminium.  In 2007 CCE signed the Courtauld Commitment - a voluntary agreement on reducing packaging signed by 26 leading brand owners, manufacturers and retailers aiming to bring about absolute reductions by 2010.

In 2009 CCE's water use ratio was 1.42 litres of water per litre of beverages produced.  A reduction in ratio to our 2001 figures of 29.4%

CCE calculates and publishes the CO2 emissions resulting from the manufacture and distribution of all its brands, and in 2007 CCE partnered with the Carbon Trust to measure all greenhouse gas emissions embodied within selected products in the portfolio.  For further information please visit www.cokecce.co.uk.

About vinspired
v, the national young volunteers service, is an independent charity dedicated to helping young people volunteer in ways that matter to them.
www.vinspired.com

About Recoup
Recoup are a plastics recycling consultancy based in Peterborough. For over 20 years, Recoup has been a key player in the recycling of plastics, through setting up schemes to collect plastics to producing guidance documentation around the recyclabililty of plastic packaging.
www.recoup.org