Coca‑Cola Europacific Partners Netherlands has announced it will start its bottle crates with 97% recycled plastic.
The reusable crates provide the Dutch catering industry with refillable glass Coca-Cola bottles. The crates are usually made of HDPE or PP and have an average life span of 15 years. At their end of life, they can be recycled into new crates.
Most of the recycled plastic that will be used for the crates will however come from generic red recyclate crates, not specifically from Coca-Cola crates, the company explained in a statement.
The recycled material consists of 85% old red crates and 15% recycled tulip nets. Coca-Cola is partnering with Maastricht-based recycler Healix to repurpose the discarded tulip nets.
The company shreds, washes, and reprocesses used twines, ropes, nets, and other plastic fibre waste from farming and fishing into pellets its Maastricht facility, which came online in 2022 and has an annual capacity of 6,000 tones of polypropylene (PP) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Its branded line of recycled polymers, called Healix, includes PP pellets made of baler twine, maritime ropes, and big bags, as well as HDPE pellets from fishing nets and tulip nets.
Dutch packaging manufacturer Schoeller Allibert is responsible for moulding the recycled crates. Producing crates with 97% recycled material saves an estimated 64% of CO2 emissions compared to crates made from virgin plastic, according to a cradle-to-gate LCA analysis of the project. Schoeller Allibert has tested the recycled crates in its test centre in Hardenberg which ‘appear to be just as sturdy as the current crates’, Coca-Cola said in a statement.
To start with, the partners will introduce 15,000 recycled crates into the Dutch market this year. Coca-Cola said it will replace the country’s entire fleet of crates ‘step by step’.