Sat 05 October 2019:
Coca-cola has unveiled what it claims to be the first bottle made using discarded plastic washed up from the oceans.
This chemical process enables lower-grade plastic to be stripped of impurities and brought back to ‘virgin grade’ so it can once again be used for food and drink packaging.
Plastic recycling rates have soared following greater public awareness of the threat to the world’s oceans, but much of it currently ends up being incinerated, or exported and kept in illegal dumps.
It claims the objective will cut its use of virgin plastic by 200,000 tons a year, underlining the progress of the Daily Mail’s Turn The Tide On Plastic campaign.
It comes as the Treasury presses ahead with the world’s first plastic tax which would set a levy on manufacturers that fail to include 30 per cent recycled content.
Tim Brett of Coca-Cola said: ‘Too many of the world’s finite resources are currently discarded as waste.
Coca-Cola, whose other brands include Fanta and Sprite, says it hopes consumers will start to see bottles made with plastic using enhanced recycling technology on the shelves by next year.
The Mail led a campaign calling for a charge on plastic bags which has hugely reduced the number given out by supermarkets each year.
It has also successfully called for a ban on plastic microbeads in cosmetics, and is campaigning for a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles.
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