Beverage giant gets behind Kabokweni clean-up campaign
Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa (CCBSA) is dedicated to contributing meaningfully to communities they operate in through various initiatives that impact the development of these communities through education and economic growth.
As a responsible corporate, CCBSA are committed to doing business the right way, and that means recognising our role in creating a World Without Waste by actively being part of the solution to the conservation of our planet. In line with this commitment, CCBSA in partnership with the Department of Social Development (DSD) is embarking on a clean-up campaign in Kabokweni, Nelspruit.
As the awareness of the global impact of plastic waste on the environment grows, the Coca-Cola system is reimagining packaging and moving steadily towards 100% recyclable packaging by 2025 and a goal to collect 100% of packages sold by 2030.
“Clean-up campaigns can only be effective if every citizen embraces it, instead of leaving the exercise to institutions, we need to sensitise community members to the importance of recycling and waste management and the impact it has on communities” said Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu, Deputy Minister at the Department of Social Development.
“This is just the beginning, we will soon launch a recycling center in partnership with CCBSA that will put food on the table. This initiative will be launched in October 2019.
The Bonaqua Swop Shop was also stationed at Kabokweni park, this gave community members and CCBSA employees who came in droves, an opportunity to collect as much PET and waste as possible and exchange or “swop” their waste for recycled essentials.
“Clean-up campaigns form an important part of our business, as producers of PET, we work very closely with communities to collect back the waste we produce and recycle it. Recycling is learnt a behaviour and we strongly believe that with every awareness campaign we have, we make an impact” said Robin Scherpenhuyzen, who also reiterated that this clean-up campaign is a start of a bigger initiative.
“This is an exciting opportunity for Kabokweni as we believe that this campaign will realises more opportunities for this community” Scherpenhuyzen concluded.
Last year, the Coca-Cola Company announced an ambitious goal to help collect and recycle the equivalent of every bottle and can it sells globally by 2030 through its World Without Waste strategy. This would include making packaging 100% recyclable globally by 2020.
