The soft drink manufacturer will soon bring its first paper bottles onto the market in a trial.
Coca-Cola is testing a special packaging material in the European market. The company plans to bring 2,000 bottles onto the Hungarian market this summer, which are almost entirely made of paper. Only a plastic lid and the lining of the bottle are still made of PET. Later this plastic should also be dropped.
The prototype not only withstands liquids, but also the gases in carbonated beverages, as the beverage company reports. In the experiment, Coca-Cola fills the paper bottles with the almond and oat drink Adez. If the test is successful, however, it is likely that the paper packaging will also be used for the other cola drinks.
Coca-Cola provided information about the paper bottle prototype for the first time last October. The now announced test is part of Coca-Cola's goal of wanting to be waste-neutral by 2030. The company is repeatedly criticized by environmentalists. But other manufacturers, such as the Carlsberg brewery or the Absolut vodka burner, are also tinkering with the paper bottle, according to the British Daily Mail.
Last year Greenpeace collected outdoor litter in 55 different countries. The organization checked which manufacturers the waste came from. Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestlé are among the world's biggest polluters, followed by Knorr parent company Unilever and Toblerone manufacturer Mondelez. According to Greenpeace, Coca-Cola produced almost 3,000,000 tons of plastic packaging in 2019. At Pepsi it was 2,300,000 tons, at Nestlé 1,500,000 tons.
