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The Coca Cola Enterprises Waste Management Programme
October 20, 2011Despite having one of the most consumed products on the planet, if not the most, the Coca Cola Enterprises Ltd is an organisation that is looked up to by most companies for its unparalleled excellence in many areas of its production processes including its waste management programme. Today we take a closer at these programmes for its UK manufacturing sites.
“As part of Coca-Cola Enterprises’ approach to Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, CCE is committed to ‘recovering the equivalent of 100% of its packaging by 2020, reducing the impact of its packaging and using renewable, reusable and recyclable resources”. Part of this commitment is a commitment to send zero waste to landfill from our manufacturing operations.”
In this article we’ll take a closer to understand how the soft drink mammoth plans to achieve that.
Back in 2001 the company committed itself to increase the amount of waste and recycling from its manufacturing sites. At the time CCE (Coca Cola Enterprises) was already recycling 72% of its manufacturing waste here in the UK.
By implementing simple changes to its production process and revising its waste management and recycling plan, by 2007 the company increased its recycling level to 94,7%. According to the company that was the easy part, it was then that the real challenge began.
In 2007 CCE decided it was time to sit down with its waste management contractor and analyse its waste stream thoroughly to come up with better and more effective solutions to increase recycling levels and divert as much waste as possible from landfills.
By investing in waste segregation, sorting and recycling equipments, rising staff awareness, measuring and publishing performance and learning from others in 2009 CCE achieved 99.5% recycling rate with four of its six manufacturing plants now sending zero-waste to landfill from manufacturing operations.
Into 2010 the company continued the focus of finding clever solutions to send zero waste to landfills and reduced by 15 tonnes the amount of waste at Morpeth and East Kilbride plants achieving an impressive recycling level of 99,9% of its waste.
From 2007 to 2009 Coca Cola Enterprises Ltd managed to divert 277 tonnes of waste from landfills with recycling, cutting the amount of packaging used in its products and maximising the amount of recycled materials used.
The goals now are to raise the amount of recycled content used in our PET bottles to 25% by 2012. And finally , to recover the equivalent of 100% of its packaging by 2020, reducing the impact of its packaging and using renewable, reusable and recyclable resources.
The Secret Formula
No we don’t have Coke’s secret formula but we figured out the formula of success of this impressive waste management and recycling scheme.
By conducting in-depth waste audits to better understand its own waste streams, investing heavily in recycling infrastructure and equipment, implementing segregated waste skips for offices, the staff canteen and production areas as well as advocating small changes in behaviour Coca Cola Enterprises Ltd managed to almost zero waste to landfill.
Anyone doubt CCE could achieve this by 2020 with more or less 8 years to go?
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