Coca-cola upcycles first bottle from ocean waste

Coca-cola has made its first upcycled bottles using plastic harvested from the ocean. This technological development may be the future of the company’s packaging.

On Thursday 3 October, Coca-cola revealed 300 sample bottles, which are to be tested to determine if these can become part of the commercial supply chain. The company hopes to roll out the first bottles commercially by 2020.

The world’s fifth-largest brand used a process called depolymerisation to successfully create the first food and drinks packaging from marine plastic waste.

Depolymerisation is the process of breaking down lower-grade plastic, reshaping it, removing any pollutants and converting it into material that can be used for PET plastics (food-grade plastics).

In the past lower-grade, non-transparent and coloured plastics couldn’t be upcycled into bottles. However this new technology allows for lower quality plastics to be used for bottles.

According to the Telegraph, plastic was collected from beach litter and from the Mediterranean sea . The upcycling process then converted the low-quality waste into high-quality plastic, allowing the company to create bottles.

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