Marine Plastic Recycled Coca-Cola Bottles

You might not think the folks at Coca-Cola slum it anywhere near the cutting edge of environmentalism, but they’ve just unveiled the world’s first plastic bottle using marine litter for beverage packaging. 300 bottles (an infinitesimally small number in relation to Coke production) symbolize their efforts to make the world a better place buy using 25% recycled marine plastic trawled from the Mediterranean Sea and its surrounding beaches. The bottles have been made with evolutionary ‘enhanced recycling’ technologies, which essentially means plastics of just about any grade can be recycled to food-grade quality plastic, a monumental achievement. Coke has partnered with Ioniqa Technologies, Indorama Ventures, and Mares Circulares (Circular Seas) for this project, and although it’s in the early stages, it shows tremendous promise. Starting in 2020, Coca-Cola actually intends to use this enhanced recycled content in some of its regular circulation of beverages.