Bottle to bottle

(Source: Swire News, Issue 01/2026: Centre Stage)

At Swire Coca-Cola, we believe that when the environment in which we operate thrives, so do we. As packaging waste continues to mount, the responsibility to minimise our environmental impact is becoming more urgent. That urgency is driving action across our business as we work towards more sustainable solutions.

In Hong Kong, Swire Coca-Cola HK has devoted time and resources in developing a "circular economy" for plastic bottles in the city. Here, plastic bottles are collected, recycled and remade into new bottles—from bottle to bottle. In fact, more than 50% of the PET used in local production last year was recycled PET (rPET).

Packaging innovations

That journey started in 2019, when we first began introducing rPET into our packaging. Today, all 500ml plastic bottles of Coca‑Cola® Original, Coca‑Cola® No Sugar and Coca‑Cola® Plus, as well as bonaqua® Mineralized Water in sizes ranging from 500ml to 1.5L, are made from 100% recycled PET (rPET) and are widely available across the city*.

Reflecting on the challenges we encountered and overcame, Richard Gould, General Manager, Swire Coca-Cola HK, said, “The switch to using rPET for our preformed bottles has been a learning process. To maintain the same quality that we had with virgin plastic, we decided to add the rPET in stages beginning initially with just 25% rPET and mixing that with regular PET. This was to ensure we were able to preserve the same 'rigidity' in the finished bottles, which is what keeps in the fizz. As we increased the amount of rPET to 100%, we adjusted our equipment and processes accordingly. So, while the quality of our bottles is exactly the same as before, the overall process is more complex. But the payoff is that the bottle-to-bottle loop stays closed.”

Alfred Weston, General Manager, New Life Plastics shared how our initiatives are creating impact: “Being able to tell this whole story gives people confidence in recycling in Hong Kong, which drives even more recycling. It is a pioneering case of the circular economy for single-use plastic in action in Hong Kong.”

Beyond recycled content, we are exploring innovative ways to reduce packaging waste. Our bonaqua Mineralized Water Label-less bottles, for example, feature etching on the bottle’s surface, instead of using single-use plastic labelling. Additionally, we’re among the first in Asia to use a thinner bottle top, where minor changes to Coca-Cola® plastic bottle necks and caps have made them about 1.5g lighter—that’s 52 tonnes of plastic we’re saving each year.

*Excluding caps and labels