We are all familiar with Coca-Cola, one of the biggest companies in the food and beverage industry, with a range of products that we love consuming, especially at parties. But once those parties end, have you ever thought about where the bottles end up, other than the trash can?
Coca-Cola did in 2018 and launched the “World Without Waste” campaign, vowing to recycle a bottle or can for every one it sells by 2030. What began as a big corporate vow has turned into a worldwide effort, mixing smart innovations, real partnerships, and hands-on work to rethink packaging from factory to refill. But with plastic piling up in landfills and choking oceans, the real question hangs in the air: can the fizz that refreshes us help wash away a global waste nightmare?
What is Coca-Cola’s ‘World Without Waste’ Campaign?
Coca-Cola’s “World Without Waste” is framed as a long-term circular-economy strategy that tries to redesign how the company uses packaging, not just how it cleans it up. It combines global 2030 targets with product and system changes, including new bottle designs, higher recycled content, and large-scale collection and recycling partnerships.
What “World Without Waste” actually is
- Announced in January 2018, Coca-Cola describes “World Without Waste” as a global vision to “help create a world without waste” by changing both its packaging and the systems that manage it.
- The initiative focuses on three pillars, aiming to keep bottles and cans circulating in the economy and out of landfills and oceans.
2030 headline goal: 1 bottle back for each one sold
- In its launch press release, Coca-Cola set a global goal to help collect and recycle the equivalent of 100% of its packaging by 2030. Put simply, for every bottle or can it sells, it aims to help take one back so it “has more than one life”.
- This goal covers not only Coca-Cola’s own brands but also includes support for collecting packaging from other companies where systems are shared, for example, via industry collection schemes and local infrastructure.
100% recyclable packaging and recycled content targets
- As part of World Without Waste, Coca-Cola committed to make 100% of its packaging recyclable globally by 2025. Company and regional sustainability pages repeat this ambition: “Make 100% of our packaging recyclable globally by 2025, and use at least 50% recycled material in our packaging by 2030.”
- The company also set a target that by 2030, its bottles will contain an average of 50% recycled material, primarily recycled PET for plastic bottles. This is meant to reduce demand for virgin plastic and support a closed-loop “bottle-to-bottle” system.
The Three Pillars of Coca-Cola’s ‘World Without Waste’
The three pillars – Design, Collect, Partner – are essentially Coca-Cola’s roadmap for turning “World Without Waste” from a slogan into a packaging and waste‑management system that works more like a closed loop than a straight line from factory to landfill. Each pillar focuses on a different part of the life of a bottle or can: how it is made, how it is recovered, and who needs to work together to make that recovery actually happen.
Design: Changing the Package Itself
The Design pillar is about making every bottle and can 100% recyclable and steadily increasing the use of recycled PET (rPET) so that yesterday’s bottle becomes tomorrow’s packaging in a “bottle‑to‑bottle” loop. Coca-Cola has rolled out 100% rPET bottles (excluding caps and labels) in markets like Sweden, New Zealand, Canada and India, with these moves framed as steps toward its global goal of using at least 50% recycled material in packaging by 2030.
Design also includes light‑weighting (using less plastic or aluminum per unit) and trialling plant‑based or lower‑carbon materials, which cuts virgin plastic use and reduces the overall carbon footprint of packaging. Company sustainability pages group these efforts under design innovations that support a circular economy: better materials, less material, and clearer on‑pack messaging such as “Recycle Me Again” to steer behaviour.
Collect: Building Systems to get Bottles Back
Under Collect, the company’s long‑standing global goal has been to help collect and recycle the equivalent of 100% of the packaging it sells by 2030 – in practice, aiming for collection volumes that match its sales volumes of bottles and cans. In some regions, this is expressed as collecting “one PET bottle for every product sold,” with specific infrastructure like recycling boxes and separate bins for bottles, caps and labels.
To move toward this, the company Coca-Cola supports and co‑builds collection and recycling systems: extended producer responsibility schemes, deposit‑return programs, material recovery facilities (MRFs) and “Swachhta Kendras” in India, and reverse‑vending and informal‑sector integration in multiple markets.
In India, for example, the company reports collecting over 110,000 metric tonnes of waste through World Without Waste initiatives, partnering with PROs like PACE and NGOs such as Saahas, Chintan and Hasiru Dala to strengthen the collection ecosystem and formalise work for waste‑pickers.
Partner: Collaborating Beyond the Company
The Partner pillar recognises that Coca-Cola cannot fix waste systems alone, so it works with governments, municipalities, industry coalitions, NGOs, and community groups to improve waste management and recycling. The UN SDG partnership entry for World Without Waste highlights collaboration with central and local government, beverage industry peers, and local communities to maintain reliable collection and recycling schemes.
In practice, this includes beach and river clean‑ups, public education, and research partnerships: examples range from Versova Beach clean‑ups in Mumbai with United Way Mumbai, to “Adopt a Beach” and International Coastal Cleanup campaigns in Sri Lanka, to support for The Ocean Cleanup’s river Interceptor projects in Southeast Asia. These activities are often framed as part of Coca-Cola’s CSR portfolio – combining marine litter removal, citizen engagement, school and community awareness campaigns, and policy‑relevant research on how plastics move from land to rivers and seas.
“More than a million plastic bottles are sold throughout the world every minute, and most, 91%, are not recycled. All plastic packaging can and should have more than one life. The beverage industry, including Coca-Cola HBC, has an obligation to take significant action to solve this problem.”
~ Louise Sullivan,
Head of Packaging Recovery, Coca-Cola HBC
Coca-Cola’s Growing Plastic Footprint
Despite its sustainability pledges, Coca-Cola continues to struggle with its expanding plastic usage. A new report by Oceana warns that the company’s plastic consumption could reach 9.1 billion pounds (4.1 million metric tons) annually by 2030 – a 40% increase since 2018 and 20% higher than in 2023. That’s enough plastic to wrap around the Earth more than 100 times.
Even worse, Oceana estimates that 1.3 billion pounds (602,000 metric tons) of this plastic waste could end up in oceans and waterways each year by 2030, enough to fill the stomachs of over 18 million blue whales.
Missed Opportunities in Reuse and Recycling
Oceana’s research suggests that reusable packaging is the most effective way to reduce waste. If Coca-Cola increased its reusable packaging to 26.4% by 2030 (up from 10.2% in 2023), it could lower its total plastic usage instead of increasing it. Reusable bottles, which can be refilled 25 times (plastic) or 50 times (glass), could replace up to 49 single-use bottles each.
However, in December 2024, the company abandoned its goal of making 25% of its packaging reusable, a major pillar of its World Without Wasteprogram. Ironically, it reaffirmed two months later that reusable packaging remains vital to its Revenue Growth Management (RGM) strategy.
Now, Coca-Cola’s focus has shifted to collecting and recycling single-use plastic bottles and using recycled content in its packaging. The company invested around $1 billion in 2022 to buy recycled plastic, but Oceana notes this approach doesn’t cut overall plastic production; it just substitutes new plastic for recycled plastic, while keeping single-use packaging dominant.
Calls for Real Action and Accountability
According to a study in the journal Science, Coca-Cola is the world’s top branded plastic polluter. Scientists are also linking plastic pollution and its chemicals to rising health problems, including cancer, infertility, heart disease, autism, and diabetes.
Environmental experts and Oceana urge Coca-Cola to replace single-use packaging with reusable systems and take meaningful action now. They also call on investors to pressure the company into reducing plastic use, and ask policymakers to set stronger regulations to limit the environmental and health damage caused by single-use plastics.
Can Coca-Cola Bottle a Waste-Free World?
Coca-Cola’s “World Without Waste” shines as a corporate sustainability blueprint, with tangible wins like 100% rPET bottles in key markets and over 110,000 metric tons collected in India alone through community partnerships. The three pillars offer a practical roadmap, turning waste pickers into stakeholders and beaches into battlegrounds against plastic.
Still, the Oceana report paints a sobering picture: plastic use climbing 40% since launch, reuse targets quietly dropped, and ocean pollution risks swelling despite billion-dollar investments. Science ties this debris to health crises from cancer to infertility, demanding more than recycling, true reduction via reusables.
The path forward? Coca-Cola must revive reuse ambitions, investors must push harder, and governments regulate single-use plastics. Until then, every bottle we crack open carries a quiet challenge: sip responsibly, or watch the party trash pile up forever.
