Who hasn’t dreamed of a vending machine that, instead of swallowing all your coins, gives you money back? We all love soft drinks, but exorbitant prices mean that a can of soda is becoming an increasingly rare luxury. However, Coca-Cola has decided to incentivize consumers to earn a little money and help the environment at the same time.
That’s right: the global carbonated-beverage giant has decided to roll out a fleet of machines that reward you for returning your empty Coca-Cola bottles. These vending machines do not sell any bottles, but instead buy your empty containers. Coca-Cola is one of the largest mass producers on the planet (read: it produces a large part of the pollution in the form of PET bottles), and it has set out to launch a sustainability campaign that gives consumers a little money… and helps it clean up its public relations image.
A World Without Waste
Many dream of Coca-Cola returning to being the company that only sold drinks in bottles. It’s nonsense: Coca-Cola served from a glass bottle tastes much better and seems to retain its flavor better. However, this traditional packaging is a logistical nightmare; it is extremely heavy, prone to breakage, and incurs higher transportation costs. Although glass bottles can be used dozens of times, washed, and then melted down to create another bottle, they are so heavy that the industry preferred to focus on aluminum cans and plastic bottles.
Easily singled out as one of the global companies with the largest plastic pollution footprint, Coca-Cola is under enormous social and environmental pressure. That is why it launched its campaign in 2018 with the global initiative “World Without Waste.” Coca-Cola’s goal is to collect and recycle the equivalent of 100% of every bottle and can it sells globally by 2030. To most people, this will sound good, although some who know more about the subject will know that it is a greenwashing campaign.
This is where these container return machines come into play. By safely collecting high-quality PET plastic, they ensure that it can be recycled to create new bottles, closing the loop in what is called rPET (recycled PET).
How does this Coca-Cola machine work?
If you happen to come across a Coca-Cola bottle return machine, its mechanism is very simple. Instead of trying to get a Coca-Cola Zero out of it, you have to deposit your empty Coca-Cola bottles in it. When you insert your plastic PET bottle or aluminum can, the machine scans the barcode on each package to verify that the container is eligible (they do not accept competitors’ containers, so don’t try to bring them Pepsi bottles!).
Once the container is accepted as valid, it is crushed internally. This process reduces the volume of the packaging by up to 70%, so the machine can accept many more containers than if they were left empty. This maximizes space and facilitates the transport of waste back to the recycling center. Finally, the machine rewards you with cash or a voucher that can be redeemed at a nearby supermarket.
This type of machine is very effective: the human mind works on positive stimuli. Many people will be too lazy to recycle just for the sake of the environment, but if they know they will get back a small percentage of what they paid for the drink, they will make the effort to keep all the containers clean and take them to be deposited and get a deposit back. It may seem silly, but the machine pays up to £0.20 for each eligible container in the UK. If you live in a student house with a few Coca-Cola addicts, you can earn enough money to pay for your own fizzy drinks.
There are currently around 45 Coca-Cola bottle return machines, and they are planning to partner with 200 stores this year.
