Convert your empties into Eco-friendly goodies
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
This Saturday, Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd (CCE) is attending Sainsbury's Super Saturday, a celebratory event marking 'one year to go' until London Paralympics 2012. CCE will be using its innovative recycling solution, Swap for Swag, to encourage the 20,000 attendees to recycle their empty plastic bottles in exchange for eco-friendly festival essentials.
This will be the final Swap for Swag event of 2011, following great successes at the Isle of Wight Festival, T4 on the Beach, Underage Festival, V Festival Weston Park and Notting Hill Carnival. So far this year, a stunning six tonnes of plastic bottles have been collected, and over 140,000 bottles swapped for nearly 10,300 items of eco-friendly swag.
Families will no doubt get through a lot of bottles of soft drinks as they enjoy the music and demonstrations from Paralympics athletes at Super Saturday. By inspiring festival-goers themselves to get involved in the recycling process, CCE's Swap for Swag will help ensure that as many bottles as possible are collected to be given a second life through recycling.
At the Swap for Swag shop, festival-goers can swap their empty plastic bottles for limited edition festival essentials made out of recycled PET. [2] Up for grabs will be items including rain ponchos, hoodies and t-shirts.
As well as running the Swap for Swag shop, volunteers from CCE will also be manning 15 recycling points around the festival ground to make it as easy as possible for people to recycle, wherever they are on the site.
Festival-goers will also be encouraged to make their own recycled fashion accessories, have their photo taken in the CCE photo-booth; and then upload the photos onto Facebook.
Coca-Cola Enterprises' Recycling Director, Patrick McGuirk said: "Following the huge success of the Swap for Swag shop at festivals and cultural events this year, we are expecting to end the summer with a bang at Sainsbury's Super Saturday. We hope to engage even more consumers and make recycling easier than ever before for them.
"We hope to engage 'casual recyclers' at the festival - those who recycle occasionally and when it is convenient - and show just how impactful recycling can be. Festivals have been a great place to spread the sustainability message, and I believe we have really encouraged people to think about recycling their empty bottles on a regular basis in their everyday lives."
CCE aims to give all PET plastic bottles a second life - to take used plastic back, wash it, break it down and turn it into new PET bottles for the next round of festivities. CCE is committed to recover the equivalent of 100 per cent of its packaging by 2020. In support of CCE's sustainability goals, the Swap for Swag baler and production office are powered by a solar generator and panels.
Notes to editors
Coca-Cola Enterprises' won the Best Sponsor Activation award at the UK Festival Awards 2010 for its Recycling Programme.
PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) is a recyclable plastic that is commonly used for carbonated beverage and water bottles.
For further information please contact Becky Potgieter or Elisabeth Middlemas at 3 Monkeys Communications on cocacolaenterprises@3-monkeys.co.uk / 01895 844 828.
