Waste Or Opportunity?
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Reprinted from RESOURCE RECYCLING North America’s Recycling and Composting Journal www.resource-recycling.com Waste or opportunity? A survey of the major beverage companies finds vast room for improvement as most earn failing grades on recycled-content issues. by Nishita Bashki and Pat Franklin merican consumers purchase, on aver- of beverage companies in recovering con- mental Working Group (Washington), Friends A age, over 500 million beverage bottles tainers for recycling is critically important. of the Earth (Washington), Natural Resource and cans each day. Only about one in three To that end, social responsibility group As Defense Council (New York) and the Sierra are recycled, while two out of three beverage You Sow (San Francisco) and the Container Club (San Francisco) and sent to major bev- containers sold are landfilled, incinerated or Recycling Institute (Washington) surveyed erage companies. Five companies (Coca- littered. Each year, the U.S. produces more major beverage companies to measure and Cola Co., PepsiCo, New Belgium Brewery, packaged beverages and recycles a smaller compare individual company performance in Polar Beverage and Starbucks) responded portion of the containers. reducing beverage container packaging and and, ultimately, a dozen beverage companies Given the increasing volumes of beverage increasing container recovery and recycling. were evaluated on the basis of the survey containers sold, falling recycling rates and response and publicly available information demand for scrap feedstocks, producer respon- Beverage container recycling on Web sites and annual reports. The score- sibility is critical to retaining and expanding scorecard card evaluated over 95 percent of the car- domestic markets in all regions of the coun- The Beverage Container Recycling Score- bonated soft drink market, more than 60 per- try. Markets are generally strong for high card, designed by the two organizations, was cent of the bottled water market, and over 70 quality glass containers, plastic bottles and based on a survey endorsed by the Environ- percent of the beer industry. aluminum cans. Domestic markets for scrap PET bottles outpace the supply of PET bot- Nishita Bakshi is research director of the corporate social responsibility program at As You Sow (San tles collected and glass manufacturers cannot Francisco) and author of the recently released study Waste and Opportunity: U.S. Beverage Container get the quantity and quality of scrap bottles Recycling Scorecard and Report. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Pat Franklin is exec- necessary to make new glass bottles. utive director of the Container Recycling Institute (Washington). She can be contacted at pfranklin@con Defining the role and measuring the efforts tainer-recycling.org. Resource Recycling December 2006 1 The results of the survey should serve as a tool for investors and other stakeholders to Table 1 U.S. beverage container recycling scorecard measure and compare individual company performance in reducing beverage container Beverage container packaging, using recycled content, increas- Recycled recovery & Source Overall Total grade ing container recovery, and recycling of glass, Company content recycling reduction grade point average plastic and aluminum beverage containers. PepsiCo B C+ D+ C 2.3 Coca-Cola Co. D C+ B C 2.1 Evaluating the performance of Miller Brewing Co. D D- D D- 0.9 beverage makers New Belgium Brewery C F F D- 0.7 Beverage companies were evaluated based Coors Brewing Co. D+ D- F D- 0.7 on three core criteria, including: Anheuser-Busch F D D D- 0.7 N Commitment and actions taken to include Polar Beverages F D F F 0.6 recycled content in beverage containers Starbucks D F F F 0.3 N Commitment, actions taken and policies Nestlé Waters F F F F 0.1 supported to improve beverage container Cadbury Schweppes F F F F 0.0 recovery and recycling Cott F F F F 0.0 N Commitment and actions taken to reduce National Beverage Corp. F F F F 0.0 amount of packaging material (i.e., source reduction). Source: Container Recycling Institute, 2006. PepsiCo (Purchase, New York) and Coca- Cola Co. (Atlanta) topped the list of the 12 on an industry-wide quantitative beverage thereafter was provided. surveyed companies, with a grade of C. Four container recovery goal. The goal, however, The recycling rate for PVC bottles is less other companies earned a D-, while the is yet to be announced and beverage container than one percent in the U.S. and several health remaining six all received an F (see Table 1). recycling remains stalled at the low rate of issues have been raised about its use. Cad- Recycled content: Coca-Cola and Pepsi- 33.5 percent. Only one-in-five PET bottles bury Schweppes mentioned in its 2004 Cor- Co have shown some leadership in their use is collected for recycling. As long as the porate Social Responsibility report that the of recycled content. PepsiCo earned the best demand for scrap PET bottles remains high- "weight of many of their PET containers, cans ranking for recycled content because the com- er than the volume of bottles collected, and glass bottles has been significantly pany met its goal of using 10-percent recy- increasing the amount of recycled content in reduced over the past decade," but did not pro- cled content in its plastic carbonated soft drink plastic beverage bottles will be difficult. vide details. and water bottles in the U.S. by the end of Increasing recovery is the key to increasing Cadbury Schweppes, Cott (Toronto), 2005, and has committed to continue using recycled content in all beverage container National Beverage Corp. (Fort Lauderdale, this level of recycled content in 2006. Coca- types. Florida) and Nestlé Waters fared particular- Cola also met its 10-percent recycled-content Source reduction: Coca-Cola Co. ly badly in the survey, presenting little or no goal in its PET bottles sold in North Ameri- received the highest grades for source reduc- information about any recycling efforts for ca in 2005, but did not commit to the same tion, as it provided detailed information on their beverage containers on their Web sites goal for 2006. its light-weighting goals for 2006, as well as or in public reports. New Belgium Brewery (Fort Collins, Col- its efforts in 2005. In 2005, Coca-Cola report- While some progress has been made by orado) stated its commitment to use "as much ed that by changing the shape and weight of several beverage companies on recycled con- recycled content as it can" in glass bottles. its various bottles, overall PET use was tent (PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and New Belgium Coors Brewing Co. (Golden, Colorado) stat- reduced by two percent. The company stat- Brewery) and in reducing the weight of con- ed on its Web site that it is using 42-percent ed that it reduced the weight of its glass bot- tainers, much more can be done to incorpo- recycled content in its aluminum cans and 30 tles, and thus glass use, by 25 percent in 2005. rate higher levels of recycled content in bev- percent in glass bottles. Miller Brewing Co. For 2006, Coca-Cola’s goals include reduc- erage cans and bottles and there is still room (Milwaukee) stated that it is committed to ing the weight of the 20-ounce PET water bot- for improvement in source reduction. Despite purchasing glass with up to 50-percent recy- tle by 3.5 grams, and that of the carbonated these strides, virtually no action has been tak- cled content, but provides no details on the soft drink bottle of the same size by two grams en by beverage companies, individually or use of recycled aluminum cans. Starbucks through redesign. collectively, to significantly increase bever- (Seattle) incorporates 10-percent post con- Miller Brewing Co. stated on its Web site age container recovery. sumer waste paper in its hot paper cups as of that it has eliminated 50 percent of the alu- 2006; however, Starbucks does not use any minum in its cans, saving 50,000 tons of alu- What the data shows recycled content in its Ethos brand PET water minum per year, and also reduced the amount If all beverage companies utilized 10-percent bottles. Both Cadbury Schweppes (London) of glass in its bottles, saving over 100,000 post consumer recycled content in their plas- and Nestlé Waters (Greenwich, Connecticut) tons of glass per year. Anheuser-Busch (St. tic soft drink and water bottles in 2004, they report on their Web sites that they will soon Louis) maintained that it has saved over 12 would have saved the energy equivalent of begin incorporating recycled content into PET million pounds of aluminum through light- almost 1.6 million barrels of crude oil or 72 bottles, but do not provide implementation weighting efforts, including lid reduction, in million gallons of gasoline. This would have dates or goals. 2005, but does not provide details about glass been enough to electrify over 270,000 U.S. Recovery and recycling efforts: Coca- usage. Nestlé Waters provided information homes for one year. If the percentage of recy- Cola Co. and PepsiCo both received the high- on its move away from polyvinyl chloride cled content reached 25 percent (in 2004) for est ranking for beverage container recovery (PVC) bottles in 1992, and the resulting reduc- all beverage companies across all of their plas- and recycling efforts, as they both commit- tion in bottle weight, as an effort toward source tic bottles, they would have saved the energy ted to engage with other industry members reduction. No further information on efforts equivalent of nearly four million barrels of 2 Resource Recycling December 2006 Greenhouse gas emissions Table 2 Beverage container sales, 1973-2003 (in billions of units) and recycling rates Container type 1973 1983 1993 2003 2005 Aluminum cans 10 56 94 99 98 If the current level of beverage container Glass bottles 25 32 32 36 (1) 36 (1) sales were to remain constant (nearly 200 PET plastic bottles — 4 (1) 9 48 56 (1) billion units sold per year), but the overall HDPE plastic bottles — 3 (1) 57 9 (1) recycling rate were to reach 80 percent Total 35 95 140 190 199 instead of the current 33.5 percent, then using the U.S.