Bottle-shaped bins make appearance in Baguio for Coke’s recycling campaign

BAGUIO CITY—Transparent bins shaped like giant soda-bottles will be distributed around the city exclusively for empty plastic bottles in a campaign by soda manufacturer Coca Cola Philippines to prevent more plastic pollution during the pandemic.

The bins would be repositories for clear bottles made of Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which can be recycled, said lawyer Juan Lorenzo Tañada, Cola Cola director for community and regulatory affairs during flag-raising ceremony at City Hall on Monday (Sept. 28).

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic “is the greatest challenge we face as a nation in the last 50 years,” he said, “but there are other pressing issues we must address such as the environment.”

The soda bottle bins will take back discarded PET bottles from Coca Cola and other companies which sometimes end up as street litter, Tañada said.

Coca Cola invested $20-million in a PET recycling facility that intends to process up to 16,000 metric tons of bottles. “We will be able to reuse it again for full grade packaging. This means the life of a PET bottle doesn’t end with one use (and thrown in the dumps). We can use over and over again. That is the beauty of PET bottles,” Tañada said.

The first Coca Cola bin was stationed at the fork leading up to downtown Session Road, but some people mistook it for an ordinary waste basket.

“We realize we have an issue with PET bottles lying around uncollected and we want to do our part,” Tañada said.

Earlier during the lockdown, Coca Cola promoted “honesty carts,” or unmanned sales carts which relied on customers dropping coins or bills in a pay box each time they purchased a water bottle.

The money it raised was donated to Baguio residents, who were most economically displaced by the quarantine.