Coca-Cola uses new campaign to encourage more people to recycle

Coca-Cola is launching a marketing campaign to encourage people to recycle its bottles as it attempts to reduce its environmental impact.

Coca-Cola sustainability campaign 2019Coca-Cola is launching a marketing campaign that aims to remind people its bottles are recyclable and encourage them to recycle.

The campaign, titled ‘Round in Circles’ and created by agency Recipe, will appear in print and outdoor, with a focus on transport hubs. Launched to coincide with Recycle Now’s Recycle Week, it will also see the Coca-Cola London Eye turned green.

The creative features a range of Coca-Cola brands and weaves information into circular artwork. This is meant to demonstrate the company’s commitment to helping develop a circular economy.

Kris Robbens, marketing director at Coca-Cola Great Britain, says: “As well as taking action to make our packaging as sustainable as possible, it’s important that we use our marketing and communications to encourage more people to recycle our bottles after they have enjoyed the drink. They are more likely to do this if they know they can be turned into new bottles again.

“Across all our brands we want to use more recycled material in all our packaging, however that requires more of it to be collected so that it can be reused to make new bottles.”

Plastic debate: Price and convenience still outweigh consumers’ willingness to go ‘naked’

The campaign is part of wider plans by Coca-Cola to improve the sustainability of its packaging in a strategy first unveiled in 2017. Actions include ending the use of plastic shrink-wrap on its multipack cans in favour of cardboard, changing its Sprite bottle from green to clear to make it easier to recycle and moving its Glaceau Smartwater brand to 100% recycled plastic.

Recycle Now campaign manager, Craig Stephens, welcomes the marketing push from Coca-Cola, claiming it shows the company is “committed to making a difference to our environment”.

“Coca-Cola has been at the forefront of the industry-wide discussion around the changes in the way we design, produce, use, re-use, dispose and reprocess packaging. While finding the most sustainable packaging solutions is a critical part of a circular model, recycling infrastructure and behaviour also need to be considered a priority,” he adds.

This is not the first time Coca-Cola has pushed a sustainability message in its advertising; it ran a recycling message in 2017. While the move was broadly welcomed, critics raised concerns over how much plastic waste the company is responsible for, with the company selling more than 100 billion single-use plastic bottles a year.

Recommended