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environment

Environment

Sustainability is a key issue for the soft drinks industry.  Innovations in packaging, efficiencies in transport and savings in energy and water use in the production of soft drinks have enabled us to reduce our environmental impact, but we want to go further.

BSDA activities

  • BSDA supports the introduction of a GB-wide deposit return scheme to help increase recycling rates across the country, and wishes to see this sit alongside reform of the producer responsibility system. See this link for more.
  • BSDA is a supporting signatory of WRAP’s Courtauld Commitment 2025, a ten-year commitment aiming to make food and drink production and consumption more sustainable.
  • BSDA and the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) worked in collaboration with Britvic Soft Drinks and Carlsberg (UK) on a WRAP project to reduce the amount of product waste in the brewing and soft drinks industries, ‘Project Shandy’. The companies saved £293K on two sites, and further savings are expected as waste prevention solutions are adopted on other sites.  WRAP has published two case studies detailing how savings were achieved, and a checklist with scores of waste prevention opportunities.
  • The leading soft drinks companies are signatories to the on-pack recycling label scheme (OPRL), which provides consumers with more consistent information on what packaging can and cannot be recycled.
  • BSDA members are working towards a UK Food and Drink industry target to reduce overall water usage across the industry by 20% by 2020. 

FAQs

Why is it important to recycle?

Recycling your drinks containers when you have finished with them means they can be turned back into more soft drinks packaging or made into other useful products.  It also reduces the burden on virgin materials.  Current recycling rates are rising, but there is still room for improvement:

  • plastic bottle recycling rate 57%
  • metal can recycling rate 60%
  • glass bottle recycling rate 68%

Cans, bottles (glass and plastic) and cartons are all recyclable, so it’s important that you do your bit.  Here’s where you can find out whether our products are collected for recycling in your area.   

 

How does the recycling process work?

WRAP has developed some great videos illustrating what happens to your plastic and glass bottles, cans and cartons when you recycle them and also provides some useful facts and figures on these materials on the Recycle Now website. 

What is the industry doing to reduce its carbon footprint? 

The soft drinks industry takes the protection of the environment very seriously, which is why we are working with the whole supply chain to reduce our footprint.  We are looking at key hotspot areas including water use, packaging, raw materials and carbon impacts.  For more information, take a look at our sustainability roadmap page.

What is Lightweighting?

For information on lightweighting, visit our Packaging page