Coca-Cola Philippines, Basco sign MOU for PET bottle collection, recycling

Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines Inc. (CCBPI) has partnered with the municipality of Basco in Batanes for the collection and recycling of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles.

In a statement, CCBPI said it signed a memorandum of understanding with the municipal government of Basco, which covers clearing about 20,000 kilograms or 20 tons of post-consumer recyclable PET bottles.

In addition, there would be a post-consumer PET flow from Batanes to Gen. Trias in Cavite where CCBPI and Indorama Ventures’ bottle-tobottle recycling facility PETValue is being built.

“This project is very important to us because for the longest time, it has been a challenge especially for our MENRO (Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office) on how we can take out from Basco the piled up PET bottles (in our area). The municipal government’s budgetary and operational limitation hamper us from doing a big scale transport of our PET bottles, and there are only a few junk shops that operate in

Basco that can help us ship out these materials,” Basco Mayor Demetrius Narag said.

Juan Lorenzo Tañada, director for corporate and regulatory affairs at CCBPI, said the PET bottles collected from Basco would be used as initial feedstock for the PETValue’s processes.

“We will be storing them responsibly while we wait for the facility to be operational,” he said.

CCBPI has been working with local government units and non-government organization partners to help build the recycling facility’s feedstock or stored post-consumer PET bottles.

CCBPI and global leader in green technologies Indorama Ventures, are building the country’s first bottleto-bottle, food-grade recycling facility called PETValue which will have the capacity to process approximately 30,000 metric tons per year or almost three billion pieces of plastic bottles.

Through the facility, PET plastic bottles, including those produced by other manufacturers, would be collected and processed so the plastic bottles could be used again and again within the circular economy.

The PETValue project has been granted pioneer status by the Board of Investments for being the first facility of its kind in the country.

Construction of the PETValue is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of this year. –

Director for corporate and regulatory affairs of CCBPI Juan Lorenzo Tañada (left panel) and Mayor Demetrius Narag (right) of Basco signed a memorandum of understanding last April 22. The partnership demonstrates the vast potential of PET plastic bottle collection for recycling here in the Philippines. Mayor Narag is joined by Carlito Cari, municipal environment officer of Basco.