“Water is a priority for the Coca-Cola system because it is the first ingredient in all our beverages and is essential to the communities we serve.

“The Coca-Cola Company’s 2030 Water Security Strategy focuses on increasing water security. We work with partners to provide access to a steady supply of clean water for people and ecosystems in the areas where we operate and source ingredients,” Ramogase said.

“We do that by contributing toward sustainable, clean water access that improves livelihoods and wellbeing while protecting against water-related disasters.

“Inside our operations, we are committed to regenerative water use. This means using less water as well as re-using and treating wastewater.

“For example, in Kenya we opened a new wastewater treatment plant at our Equator Bottlers plant in Kisumu, which will promote more sustainable water use and help reduce the factory’s environmental impact. The new plant will enable us to treat and recycle wastewater generated from the production facility, which will be used for non-potable purposes such as irrigation and cleaning.

”Our subsidiary, Coca-Cola Beverages Botswana, signed an agreement last year with the Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources to donate water from its newly installed water treatment plant for agricultural irrigation at the campus. The new state-of-the-art water treatment plant has made the company fully effluent compliant by ensuring that clean water is returned to the environment.

“For our packaging, we seek to drive a circular economy because this helps to reduce waste and carbon emissions. We’re working to use more recycled content in our packaging, to expand our use of refillable bottles, and to collect packaging for recycling through Coca-Cola’s World Without Waste initiative. We also partner to design new solutions for packaging.

“As an example, Coca-Cola and other like-minded industries came together in 2004 to set up the PET Recycling Company (PETCO) in South Africa to promote and regulate the recycling of PET plastic, taking responsibility for recovering and recycling beverage PET plastic bottles.

“The PETCO model has proven so effective it has been extended to three other markets, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia, with plans to include additional countries like Namibia.

“While we strive to make progress on our own, we are committed to fostering partnerships that drive collective impact in areas including water stewardship, packaging circularity, climate action and many more.

“We engage with stakeholders, including governments, NGOs, communities, suppliers, business partners, customers and consumers in all the markets where we operate, in many forums and formats. Feedback from our stakeholders allows us to learn and improve, and informs our business and sustainability strategy,” Ramogase said.

ENDS

Staff from Voltic (GH) Limited, members of the University of Ghana Plastic Recycling Project and the La Dadekotopon Municipal Assembly team joined forces to collect PET bottles for disposal by Beach Cleanup Ghana – a cleantech organisation that uses smart technology to help restore cleanliness to beaches in Ghana.

The cleanup was the second this year involving the same partners in a bid to remove plastic waste affecting the beach and lagoon.

“The interconnected global challenges of packaging waste and climate change have made this a focus for our business and communities. The Coca-Cola Company and its bottling partners are taking a hard look at the packaging we use and how we can drive change,” said Worlasi Seddoh Bedu Mensah, Public Affairs, Communication and Sustainability Manager at Voltic (GH) Limited, a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa.

“Our sustainable packaging strategy aims to create systemic change through a circular economy for our packaging – from how bottles are designed and manufactured, to how they’re recycled and reused.

“We have a responsibility to help solve the global plastic waste crisis, and we’re leveraging our scale and reach across markets to achieve our sustainability goals and reduce waste pollution.

“We can’t do it alone. We work with stakeholders, nonprofits, communities, governments and our industry toward a clean environment,” said Mensah.

“We are working in our communities to educate people on why and how to recycle through collection campaigns, on-package messaging and more to create a more sustainable environment for all.

“Tackling the global plastic waste crisis requires cross-sector collaboration and alignment on common principles and targets.

“We work with a range of stakeholders at a regional and local level. This includes partnering with governments and community organisations to strengthen recycling infrastructure and boost collection rates, collaborating with customers, peers and industry associations to shape public policy that supports a circular economy; and teaming up with suppliers, startups and R&D partners to fuel sustainable packaging innovation,” Mensah said.

ENDS

“As a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa, we are leading the industry in making our value chain increasingly sustainable in the way that we manufacture our products, how we distribute them and how we sell them,” said Public Affairs, Communication and Sustainability Director, Worlasi Mensah.

“We have the scale and reach to make a real difference, and we’re using our leadership position to drive change and help put our planet on a more sustainable path.

“Our goal is to collect and recycle the equivalent of 100% of the packaging we sell, working in partnership with The Coca-Cola Company which launched a sustainable packaging strategy in 2018 called World Without Waste.

“We can’t do it alone. We work with stakeholders, nonprofits, communities, governments and our industry toward a clean environment,” said Mensah.

“Tackling the global plastic waste crisis requires cross-sector collaboration and alignment on common principles and targets. We work with a range of stakeholders at a regional and local level.

“This includes partnering with governments and community organisations to strengthen recycling infrastructure and boost collection rates, collaborating with customers, peers and industry associations to shape public policy that supports a circular economy; and teaming up with suppliers, startups and R&D partners to fuel sustainable packaging innovation.

“We’re working toward these solutions to create a circular economy that benefits society and works for our business. We’ve set ambitious goals for our business, to take responsibility for our packaging across its lifecycle and reduce ocean pollution,” said Mensah.

ENDS

Plastic waste is a growing problem globally, with up to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic entering the oceans each year¹. Plastic packaging is also an essential part of our modern lives, supporting efficient, safe and hygienic food value chains, among other important applications.

On a continent where food safety is an abiding concern, this means plastic packaging will continue to have a role for some time to come, and the focus must be on eliminating plastic waste.

Creating a viable circular economy for plastic waste is a key strategy to address this problem.

The circular economy promotes the re-use and recycling of products and materials, creating a closed-loop system that minimises waste and pollution. The circular economy offers a unique opportunity to address post-consumer plastic waste in Africa by keeping plastics in use and out of the environment.

Africa also has an unusually large informal economy, with the International Labour Organisation estimating in 2018 that 85.8 percent of employment on the continent is informal.²

This includes a vast network of waste pickers who collect and sort recyclable materials, creating a key component of a circular economy for plastic waste that both generates employment and reduces plastic pollution.

Integrating waste pickers into the formal waste management system, by providing training, equipment and a reliable income, can improve their working conditions and increase economic opportunities for marginalised communities.

At the same time, by reducing waste and increasing resource efficiency, the circular economy can reduce the reliance on virgin resources and create a more sustainable future for all.

This requires a significant investment in infrastructure, technology, and education. Governments, businesses, and civil society must work together to create an enabling environment for the circular economy to thrive.

This includes policies that incentivise the use of recyclable materials, regulations that require producers to take responsibility for their products’ end-of-life, and public education campaigns that raise awareness about the benefits of the circular economy.

Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) has made a commitment to invest in our planet and our packaging, to help make the world’s packaging problem a thing of the past, working in partnership with The Coca-Cola Company which launched a sustainable packaging initiative called World Without Waste in 2018.

We are rethinking how our bottles are designed, collected, recycled and repurposed as part of our World Without Waste vision, with the following global goals:

• Help collect a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030
• Focus on making all our packaging 100% recyclable by 2025
• Make 25% of our packaging reusable by 2030

We recognise the importance of supporting the total collection value chain from waste picker level, to buy back centres and recyclers.

Understanding that we can’t do this alone, we partner with like-minded bodies to shape policy and leverage our combined scale.

Poor waste disposal is everybody’s problem, so everybody needs to get involved.

One of the most valuable environmental interventions in addressing poor waste disposal and achieving circularity is setting up the right Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mechanisms and policies.

In the EPR model, producers pay fees to a producer responsibility organisation, or PRO, such as PETCO.

By creating value for post-consumer waste in this way, waste collectors or municipalities are incentivised to gather and return it to buy-back centres, who then deliver it to the recyclers.

So far, through effective industry partnerships, we have implemented voluntary EPR models in four of our markets and helped create organisations like PETCO South Africa, in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania, and soon to be established in Uganda as well.

The model has been extremely successful since PETCO was established in South Africa, growing from collection and recycling of 9,000 tonnes of PET in 2005 to more than 92,000 tonnes in 2021, and an average price paid of around 50c/kg of PET in 2005 to around R3.80/kg in 2021, showing an increase in both volume and value.

Going a step further, the South African government adopted mandatory EPR regulations in 2021, creating a precedent that other African countries can consider and adopt too.

Building on these successes, CCBA has engaged with SADC, NEPAD and other regional organisations to roll out the self-regulated EPR model in other markets.

We are also improving the recyclability of our packs through a strong emphasis on shifting to homogeneous and clear bottles and have made significant progress on this already.

To clean up existing packaging, we’re bringing people together through programmes like beach and river cleanups and other ongoing local activities. To encourage more people to recycle more often, we’re investing to help people understand what to recycle, how to recycle, and where to recycle.

The opportunity to grow employment in Africa through a circular economy for plastic waste is clear. In Mozambique alone, a total of 37,000 people benefit from collection and recycling activity that is supported by CCBA.

Scaling up the EPR model across the continent will go a long way towards addressing unemployment and poverty, while also removing plastic waste from the environment.

1. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1260352
2. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_626831.pdf

The Summit was organized by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Advisory Unit of the Office of the President, in partnership with the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ghana, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It aimed to mobilize transformative actions to sustainably manage the ocean towards the achievement of the SDGs.

Speaking at the opening of the summit, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo pledged Ghana’s commitment to ensuring sustainable ocean management and called for a renewed commitment from all stakeholders to SDG 14 to protect life below water.

President Akufo-Addo proposed five agenda points for sustainable ocean management, including robust regulations, strategic partnerships, smart investments, research and innovation, and international collaboration.

Participating in a panel discussion at the summit, Jika said: “It is our responsibility to safeguard the ocean and as a business, we have a commitment to collect for recycling 100% of what we sell by 2030.”

As a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA), Voltic is a proud industry leader in developing increasingly sustainable ways to manufacture, distribute and sell its products.

Food and beverage packaging is an important part of our modern lives, yet the world has a packaging problem, which Voltic, together with The Coca-Cola Company, has a responsibility to help solve.

The company’s commitment is to invest in its packaging, to help make the world’s packaging problem a thing of the past, working in partnership with The Coca-Cola Company which launched a sustainable packaging initiative called World Without Waste in 2018.

Across the markets where it operates, CCBA has committed to help collect a bottle for every one it sells by 2030, make all of its packaging 100% recyclable by 2025 and make 25% of its packaging reusable by 2030

Food and beverage packaging is an important part of modern life, helping to ensure food safety and reduce food waste, yet the world has a packaging problem that requires a comprehensive response.

As part of its responsibility to help address this challenge, Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA), together with The Coca-Cola Company, has set ambitious goals to help collect a bottle or can for every one it produces by 2030, use 50% recycled content in all packaging and make 25% of its packaging reusable by the same year, while making all its packaging 100% recyclable by 2025.

The initiative, called World Without Waste, relies on partnerships with customers, consumers communities, industry and governments to succeed.

With many initiatives under way across CCBA’s territories, a few recent highlights include the move to clear Sprite PET in six markets which makes it much easier to recycle and has greater value as a recyclable material. Another milestone is the extension of the PETCO model, which is based on the principle of Extended Producer Responsibility, to three additional markets since its inception in South Africa and plans for further rollout to a total of eight markets. CCBA also started using returnable 2L PET in South Africa with the view to roll this out to other markets.

CCBA Group Head of Sustainability Diana Sibanda said the company was developing increasingly sustainable ways to manufacture, distribute and sell its products.

“We use our industry leadership to be part of the solution to achieve positive change in the world and to build a more sustainable future for our planet,” she said.

Locally, in Ghana, CCBA subsidiary Voltic (GH) Ltd has partnered with aggregators to collect bottles from pickup points around the capital and is also working with Total Energies and plastic waste pickers such as Coliba, SESA and Beach Cleanup Ghana to establish collection points at filling stations and other sites, where waste pickers can deliver used PET bottles for payment.

The PET is then bought by recyclers to use as feedstock for the production of recycled products.

Voltic holds monthly buy-back events in communities to raise awareness on the value of plastic waste and stimulate recycling activity.

In South Africa, CCBSA partnered with Matongoni Recycling Group to provide a much-needed boost to the collection of PET bottles in rural communities in Limpopo Province.

CCBSA worked with Matongoni and community groups and households to buy collected and sorted waste material and transport it to its two recycling depots in Polokwane and Johannesburg.

With the bottler providing a transport subsidy to Matongoni, collection trucks were able to cover a wider area, and a subsidy on collected materials gave locals a bigger incentive to go into the environment and collect as much waste as they could find.

In Uganda, CCBA partnered with the local council, recycling companies and Koyinawo Waste Management Services to clean up Mbarara City by collecting plastic waste in the communities of Makenke and Lubiiri.

The clean-up drive contributed to the company’s commitment to collect 75% of bottles produced in 2022 and saw the collection of 676kg of plastic.

The Rethink Plastics campaign was launched at Kiswa Primary School by the Uganda Scouts Association in partnership with Worldwide Fund for Nature and CCBA under the theme ‘Rethink Plastic, Saving our planet together, one challenge at a time’. The campaign seeks to create awareness and grassroots education on the responsible use and disposal of plastic waste across the country.

The African Union has called the Blue Economy the “New Frontier of African Renaissance”, and with good reason.

As the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa has noted in a policy handbook for the Blue Economy, 38 out of the 54 African states are coastal, more than 90 percent of the continent’s imports and exports are conducted by sea, and some of the most strategic gateways for international trade are in Africa

Maritime zones under Africa’s jurisdiction total about 13 million square kilometers, including territorial seas and approximately 6.5 million square kilometers of the continental shelf.

There is, as the UN Economic Commission for Africa puts it, ‘another Africa under the sea’.

These marine resources, including freshwater bodies and oceans, offer significant economic opportunities, yet governance of aquatic ecosystems, goods, and services is under-developed and under-resourced, resulting in degradation of ecosystems, and loss and waste of valuable resources.

As we mark World Oceans Day (WOD), it is increasingly clear that we must work together across the public and private sectors, as well as civil society, to make sustainable decisions to protect our marine ecosystems for future generations.

The issue of packaging waste features high on the list of priorities. While food and beverage packaging are an important part of our modern lives, the world has a packaging problem, which we as Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA), together with The Coca-Cola Company, have a responsibility to help solve.

We have committed to investing in our planet and our packaging to help make the world’s packaging problem a thing of the past, working in partnership with The Coca-Cola Company which launched a sustainable packaging initiative called World Without Waste in 2018.

We have the following goals in Africa: Help collect an equivalent of a bottle for every one we sell by 2030, focus on making all our packaging 100 percent recyclable by 2025, have 50 percent recycled content in our packaging by 2025, and make 25 percent of our packaging reusable by 2030.

We continued to make progress in 2020, despite the challenges from the Covid-19 pandemic. Plastic waste collection and recycling have bounced back remarkably from the disruption caused by Covid-19 restrictions, and CCBA achieved a 58 percent recycling rate for FY2021. The recyclability of our packaging is already at more than 95 percent, tracking ahead of the global target of 100 percent by 2025.

If we are to create truly circular economies, where waste is minimized and reuse of materials is maximized, the starting point is understanding that our packaging materials have value.  Importantly, we need to find ways to capture that value to prevent our packaging from becoming waste at the end of its life.

We are improving the recyclability of our packs through a strong emphasis on shifting to homogeneous and clear bottles and have made significant progress on this already. In addition, over 20 percent of our revenues are already coming from returnable or refillable packs. We are strategically looking to increase the use of homogenous returnable packs in our portfolio – which has the added benefit of being environmentally friendly and decreasing the impact on our oceans.

Our biggest challenge in recycling is accelerating the collection of plastic bottles to increase polyethylene phthalate (PET) bottle feedstock for recycled PET supply to enable higher recycled content in our bottles. Consumer behavior and accountability also remain a challenge.  We encourage all consumers of our beverages to dispose of the packaging in an environmentally responsible manner, so it can be collected and recycled for reuse.

To date, in South Africa, we are at 17 percent recycled PET content, and we have 17 percent recycled PET content in two-litre bottles in Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana, and Zambia. One example of how we are getting communities involved is in Kenya. Here we leveraged our partnerships to launch the Recycling PET Bottles initiative, getting 400 schools to participate in the collection of PET bottles. A total of over 90 000kg, or 4.5 million PET bottles, were collected and recycled as a result of this initiative.

Partnership across the business, government, and civil society is fundamental to scaling solutions and critical to achieving a circular economy. We remain committed to helping drive collective action, working with stakeholders, suppliers, non-profits, communities, customers, and industry peers to invest in recycling innovation, facilities, organizations, and initiatives.

In Africa and other developing markets, there is an additional layer of complexity, in that the market for recycled plastic in many countries is too small to support investment in recycling plants, yet the rules governing the movement of plastic waste across borders inhibit the economies of scale needed to achieve optimal rates of recycling, limit waste going to landfill, and create employment in the circular economy.

Engagement with various governments’ International Trade Administration Ministries is critical to reviewing and revising policies guiding the movement of recyclable waste across countries through regional economic platforms such as Southern Africa Development Council (SADC) and East African Business Council (EABC). CCBA remains committed to broader stakeholder engagement and collaboration to enable an efficient regional recycling industry.

With the right regulatory environment to enable higher rates of collection and recycling, and continued commitment and collaboration across industry, across countries, and with all interested partners, a World Without Waste is possible, protecting the marine environment and allowing for the sustainable development of Africa’s Oceans Economy.

Voltic (GH), a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA), has pioneered recycling projects in communities and tertiary institutions, created opportunities for women and youth in local communities through buying and selling of plastic bottles and established partnerships with NGOs, government entities and churches as the company seeks to heighten awareness of the importance of proper waste management.

Most recently, Voltic employees led a beach cleanup exercise at Laboma Beach to collect more than 20 bags of post-consumer waste for disposal by Beach Cleanup Ghana.

The organization uses smart technology solutions to clean and maintain beaches and waterbodies while creating employment opportunities in the circular economy.

Earlier this year, the ‘Say No to Single Use Plastic’ team joined Voltic and members of the University of Ghana Plastic Recycling Project to distribute free cloth shopping bags to households to discourage the use of black polythene bags.

And Voltic held plastic bottle buy-back events at Legon in the Greater Accra Region in January and February, supplying more than 200 households with recycling bags and creating awareness of proper ways to manage plastic waste.

The company held another buy-back event at Asokore – Mampong in the Ashanti Region and also donated recycling bins to the Joy2 The World International School, as well as educating staff and students on how to dispose of post-consumer waste properly through segregation.

Voltic’s Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability Manager, Worlasi Seddoh Bedu-Mensah said the company was committed to the Coca-Cola System’s World Without Waste initiative, which has set ambitious targets to help collect a bottle for every one it sells by 2030, make all its packaging 100% recyclable by 2025 and use 50% recycled content in its packaging in the same year. It will also aim to make 25% of its packaging reusable by 2030.

“Our commitment is to invest in our planet and our packaging to help make the world’s packaging problem a thing of the past,” said Mrs. Seddoh Bedu-Mensah.

“To encourage more people to recycle more often, we’re investing to help people understand what to recycle, how to recycle, and where to recycle. We also plan to work with local communities, NGOs, our competitors, and our critics to highlight this critical issue.”

Voltic has partnered with plastic waste aggregators to collect bottles from pickup points across Accra and facilitate the buying and selling of plastic bottles to establish a circular economy for plastic waste.

As part of its #IRecycle project in partnership with Total Energies and plastic waste recycling companies like Coliba, SESA and Beach Cleanup Ghana, Voltic is installing recycling bins at some Total filling stations and other strategic points across the capital.

This goes hand-in-hand with building awareness of proper post-consumer waste management habits like waste segregation, which improves the value that waste pickers get for the plastic they collect, while recyclers can buy cleaner waste bottles as raw materials.

“We are a proud industry leader in developing increasingly sustainable ways to manufacture, distribute and sell our products,” said Mrs. Seddoh Bedu-Mensah.

“As part of the CCBA group, we use our industry leadership to be part of the solution to achieve positive change in the world and to build a more sustainable future for our planet.”