“In October 2023, we installed our own internal recycled PET production unit. Many production processes take place right at our factory in Ploiesti. Starting in 2024, the entire beverage portfolio is packaged in 100 percent recycled plastic. In 2024, the emissions generated for the production of recycled PET were about 10,000 tons vs. 49,000 tons if we had continued to produce packaging from virgin PET,” Adina Tudor, External Communication Manager, Coca-Cola HBC Romania said at Circular Economy Conference organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest and Sustainability-Today.

Key statements:

• Recycled PET has an 80 percent lower carbon footprint, which is a big step forward in reducing Scope 3 emissions. For a beverage company, 89 percent of total emissions are generated in Scope 3.
• Regarding the packaging regulation, we welcome this initiative by the European Commission because this regulation will help to standardize and homogenize implementation in the member states. Thus, we will all relate to the same targets for reusable packaging and refillable packaging.
• On the Romanian market, we are among the large packaging manufacturers that have reusable bottles. For now, this packaging is only available in HoReCa, as it is a controlled system in which we can recover this packaging. We want to increase the percentage of this packaging in our portfolio and we want to expand outside the HoReCa segment. We want to find a solution together with retailers so that starting this year we can introduce reusable bottles in stores.
• We aim to bring the first beverage dispensers to the Romanian market this year. We have such pilot campaigns in Italy and Hungary. We want to test this solution in universities. It will be a challenge primarily from a quality control perspective.
• Each type of packaging has its role, for different consumption situations. We cannot completely give up PET, but we want to increase the percentage of reusable packaging in our portfolio. At the moment, the percentage of reusable packaging is 5 percent of the total. We want to increase it as much as possible, but this increase depends on our collaboration with retailers and we hope to find a solution similar to the DRS system.