Major drinks company Coca-Cola (Atlanta, Georgia / USA; www.coca-cola.com) has joined “Demeto” (www.demeto.eu), a European project that aims to chemically recycle PET using microwave technology developed by gr3n (Lugano / Switzerland; www.gr3n-recycling.com) – see Plasteurope.com of 02.11.2017. “We are thrilled to have the possibility to cooperate with The Coca-Cola Company, which has a public goal to use 50% recycled PET in its plastic packaging by 2030,” said Maurizio Crippa, CEO of gr3n and the technology’s inventor. Petcore Europe's (Brussels / Belgium; www.petcore-europe.org) executive director Chrisian-Yves Crépet is also enthusiastic about the collaboration – see Plasteurope.com of 03.07.2018.

Coca-Cola joins 16 other companies on the Demeto industrial advisory board. These companies come from varying levels of the PET/polyester value chain and include top brands of textile houses, home and personal care products, drinks, as well as plastic converters, waste collectors and recyclers.

Maria Luisa Polli, technical director at Coca-Cola central and eastern Europe, commented, “Through our ‘World Without Waste’ vision, we are investing to help make the world’s packaging waste problem a thing of the past. We will do this through a renewed focus on the entire packaging lifecycle – from how bottles and cans are designed and made, to how they’re recycled and repurposed.”

PET is one of the most widely used materials in the packaging industry, but currently only 20% is recycled and reused, with a large amount of PET waste in Europe either incinerated or sent to landfill. Demeto is funded under the EU’s “Horizon 2020” research and innovation programme.