Coca-Cola Rolled Out All-New Bottles — Here's What's Changing - Chowhound (2024)

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Few products are more closely associated with their packaging than Coca-Cola. The co*ke bottle has a long history, and every detail, from the label font to those signature curves, has become deeply ingrained in the soda's identity. Now, that iconic bottle is getting a major makeover, except, you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at it. The classic design isn't going anywhere, but beginning this week, every 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola sold at American retailers will be made from 100% recycled plastic.

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The move applies to all versions of Coca-Cola, including Diet co*ke and co*ke Zero Sugar. All versions of co*ke sold in 12-ounce bottles have already been converted to 100% recycled packaging, as have all one-liter bottles of the company's Dasani water subsidiary.

These changes are all part of a broader initiative by the Coca-Cola Company to switch all of its packaging to recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate). PET is the most commonly-used type of plastic resin. It is manufactured from fossil fuels, but it is also extremely easy and efficient to recycle. Coca-Cola first began using recycled PET, or rPET, in 2021, and has scaled up its use of recycled materials dramatically since then. Coca-Cola even stopped making Sprite in green bottles as part of the effort. These moves are a long time coming, after the company has faced substantial criticism for its plastic waste output.

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Coca-Cola has long been one of the top contributors to plastic waste. The environmental protection initiative Break Free from Plastic has ranked co*ke as the world's worst plastic polluter for six consecutive years, and The Guardian reports that the company produces more than a fifth of the world's PET plastic bottles. PET is a problem on two fronts — manufacturing produces significant amounts of greenhouse gasses while consuming scarce fossil fuel supplies, and if it isn't recycled, it often ends up in oceans and waterways, devastating wildlife populations.

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In 2018, Coca-Cola launched the World Without Waste program to address these criticisms. The initiative has three core objectives: to make 100% of Coca-Cola's packaging recyclable by the year 2025, to use 50% recycled material in all new packaging by 2030, and to have 25% of their beverages sold in refillable packaging by 2030. But even though co*ke is promoting its new packaging as being made from 100% recycled plastic, it's worth noting that the bottle caps and labels still aren't recyclable, since they are not made from rPET.While Coca-Cola's new switch to all-rPET packaging on its 12 and 20-ounce bottles is a strong step towards the initiative's second objective, there is still a lot of work to be done.

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