Coke Canada is on a journey to be the leading beverage partner in Canada as we strive to create a better future and deliver optimism by bringing sustainable value to our employees, customers, consumers, and communities. One of the ways we’re growing our business is through earning our social license to operate, building our business responsibly and making our employees and stakeholders proud by taking meaningful action on environmental sustainability. Reducing the amount of packaging in our beverage bottles is extremely important to us and, while we recognize we still have work to do, we’re pleased with the progress we’re making. Even removing small amounts of plastic from one of our already low-weight PET beverage bottles can make a difference and using recycled plastic can further reduce the amount of new plastic we use. In 2021 we undertook an exercise to minimize the amount of packaging we use in our Dasani bottles and began to work towards using 100 % recycled plastics for all of our Dasani Products.
The challenge of reducing packaging and incorporating recycled content in our beverage bottles while also maintaining quality standards, is a constant focus for our packaging design, manufacturing teams, and supplier partners. In order to operationalize the new packaging, we needed to work with suppliers to redesign the preforms. Testing was required to ensure we did not impact the product quality and trials were required to ensure the new packaging maintained structural integrity during the manufacturing, distribution, and vending process.
Through the process of decreasing the amount of packaging we used and using recycled content, our carbon footprint was reduced by minimizing the use of raw materials. Not only do packaging reduction initiatives reduce the amount of material used in packaging, they also decrease the amount of fuel and carbon emissions used in distribution. Lighter bottles mean less fuel to transport.