Is Green Sprite Bottle Bad News for a Greener Tomorrow? Here's Why Coca-Cola is Retiring Coloured Bottles Worldwide

In one of the most significant marketing decisions this year, the Coca-Cola-owned brand has decided to transition away from its signature emerald and toward clear plastic packaging for all its products. This will be part of their global effort to improve the recyclability of their products, beginning August 1.

While it will still retain a green-coloured label with some design changes, the clear packaging will help provide a more "consistent look and voice around the world" and contribute to a more circular economy. It will even sport a cheeky "Recycle me" on the label.

The reason for this is in the pudding. The original packaging is made of green polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is harder to recycle and is often categorised as a single-use product. Even if the bottle makes it to a recycling facility, it is segregated away at the beginning of the recycling process itself due to its tendency to discolour the final product.

"Taking colours out of bottles improves the quality of the recycled material," explains Julian Ochoa, the CEO of R3CYCLE, who has been helping Coca-Cola in its recycling efforts. "This transition will help increase the availability of food-grade rPET. When recycled, clear PET Sprite bottles can be remade into bottles, helping drive a circular economy for plastic."

Similar efforts with DASANI — another Coca-Cola product that will be reimagined with 100% recycled plastic — will help the company save 90 lakh kgs of new plastic compared to 2019. The company explains in their press release that this will cull 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 alone.

This has been part of Coca-Cola's World Without Waste initiative, which seeks to make 100% of their global packaging recyclable by 2025, and use at least 50% of recycled material by 2030.

While this has been a much-needed step, it might be worthwhile to note that the company continues to be notorious for its contributions to piling plastic waste across the globe. The environmental organisation 'Break Free From Plastic' even named the soda conglomerate the number one plastic polluter for the third year in a row in 2020.

Further, packaging industries have an irresponsible dependence on GHG-intensive fossil fuels because most plastic is made from fracked gas and oil. Many experts say that this relationship needs to be severed if we are to stand a chance against the looming climate crisis.

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