Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) is continuing its work to drive a closed-loop system, most recently investing in an up-and-coming technology to turn mountains of waste plastic bottles into new bottles with virgin-like properties. CCEP’s new funding venture is supporting a partial depolymerization process developed by start-up CuRe Technology. Terms of the deal are confidential, but plans are to back CuRe in accelerating the development of its technology from pilot plant to commercial readiness, ultimately enabling CCEP to increase recycled PET in its packaging and get closer to its goal of eliminating virgin PET bottles altogether.
“Once broken down into these ‘building blocks’, our process removes impurities such as colored pigments, then repolymerizes or ‘rejuvenates’ these PET ‘building blocks’ into clear polyester pellets of the same grade and quality as virgin oil-based PET,” Kunst says. CuRe’s continuous-process technology will provide all the necessary steps to sort waste polyester, process it (via partial depolymerization), and convert it into 100% recycled polyester at one site. Joe Franses, vice president, Sustainability at Coca-Cola European Partners, describes CuRe as an exciting technology start-up with transformational potential developed by an experienced consortium.
Coca-Cola has also been involved with tech company gr3n and the European project DEMETO, focused on the depolymerization of PET at scale. In this capacity, Coca-Cola has joined an industrial advisory board with other packaging manufacturers, plastic converters, waste collectors and recyclers in order to help advise on the build-out of technology.
Source: Waste360
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