My colleague Laura has written about the opportunities and challenges of carbon capture before, click here to read her article; could Coca-Cola be about to find one way of tackling those challenges?
As we enter the last quarter of 2023 and move another year closer to the net zero target of 2050 (or 2040 in Coco-Cola's case), one of the biggest users of plastic is investing in a trial at Swansea University to produce bottle tops from carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere.
If the technology works and can be produced at scale, this could be a great way to reduce emissions across the manufacturing (and therefore retail) industries. If CO2 can be captured and used at source, that also reduces the need to transport captured carbon around the country.
Recycling the plastic already in existence will still be the main means of reducing Coca-Cola's carbon footprint, which is of course preferable to making more. But where that's not the solution, creative solutions like are very intriguing.
"From 2030 to 2040 we need to start making the more radical bets... looking at lots of different technologies." Craig Twyford, director of Coca-Cola's venturing division for Europe and the Pacific
