WASHINGTON, D.C. – As America Recycles Day approaches, the non-alcoholic beverage industry reaffirms its longstanding commitment to further minimizing its environmental impact, and is making it easier for consumers to do the same.

“On America Recycles Day and every day, environmental responsibility is a top priority for our industry, from the design of our packaging to water use to the way we ship our products,” said Susan Neely, American Beverage Association (ABA) president and CEO.  “Through the collective efforts of our industry and the individual efforts of our member companies, we’re leading the way and supporting consumers in finding modern-day solutions to environmental challenges throughout America.”

The American Beverage Association has built partnerships to make recycling more accessible for people on-the-go by working with a broad range of partners, including local and state governments and municipalities. To demonstrate a variety of public space recycling systems, ABA launched a series of public-private partnerships in Florida, Massachusetts and Wisconsin. These collaborations provided recycling as an option this summer for consumers at Wisconsin County Fairs, West Palm Beach County beaches, marinas and boardwalks in Florida and in a dozen cities and towns in Massachusetts.

Through the Massachusetts Recycling Challenge (MRC), the Massachusetts Beverage Association and the ABA are working with local officials to purchase and place custom recycling collection bins in strategic locations, including sports fields, town squares, trolley stops and city parks. In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Beverage Association led a grassroots initiative to establish recycling at the County Fairs by working with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Through this effort, more than 220 syrup barrels from beverage bottlers were repurposed with new recycling lids and placed adjacent to trash cans to collect bottles and cans for recycling. Additionally, the Florida Public Space Recycling Project was a partnership between ABA, the Florida Beverage Association and the Palm Beach County Solid Waste Authority to establish recycling collection at beaches, boardwalks and marinas. Recycling bins were placed adjacent to trash cans to collect bottles and cans, reducing litter in these locations by 75 percent.

ABA member companies are also working in their communities on efforts to protect and preserve our planet, including: 

The Coca-Cola Company is committed to the recovery and recycling of its packages. Through national recycling initiatives with organizations like Keep America Beautiful, Coca-Cola has placed more than 238,000 recycle bins in communities across North America since 2008. Most recently Coca-Cola joined Walmart’s innovative recycling initiative, the Closed Loop Fund, to help provide more Americans with access to recycling infrastructure while decreasing the materials deposited in landfills. Coca-Cola also helped establish The Recycling Partnership, a unique public-private partnership to help advance curbside recycling. In 2013, Dr Pepper Snapple reduced its PET usage by approximately 14.5 million pounds, bringing the company’s total conservation since 2007 to more than 60.7 million pounds – surpassing its lightweighting goal of conserving 60 million pounds of PET. In addition, the company recycled 85 percent of its manufacturing waste, moving it closer to achieving its revised goal of 90 percent by 2015. DPS also teamed up once again with Keep America Beautiful to fund the placement of recycling bins in public parks in communities across the country. Nestlé Waters North America is committed to improving plastic beverage bottle recycling rates. The company works with Recycling Reinvented, a coalition of recycling stakeholders and other businesses aiming to make it easier for people to recycle more consumer packaging of all types, not just beverage bottles. Collecting more plastic for recycling would allow NWNA, which already incorporates recycled plastic (rPET) into five of its brands, to use more recycled content in even more bottles. PepsiCo is supporting both on-the-go and curbside recycling as part of its goal to help increase the U.S. beverage container recycling rate. Earlier this year, PepsiCo announced a partnership with The Nature Conservancy to increase recycling and protect drinking water as part of the company’s collaboration with Walmart on the Closed Loop Fund initiative. PepsiCo also has invested in support for the operation and delivery of its recycling programs, increasing the total amount of material recycled to more than 18 million pounds and 324 million containers since 2010. More than 4.4 million pounds of recycled bottles and cans have been collected as part of PepsiCo’s partnership with the Institute for Veteran and Military Families to support the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities program.  In addition, through the company’s K-12 Recycle Rally program, approximately 42.5 million containers have been collected from almost 1,000 schools since 2010. Sunny Delight Beverages Co.  continues to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability through such achievements as reducing packaging materials by 37 million pounds since 2005; further reducing per unit water and energy usage and carbon inventory; and maintaining zero waste to landfill at all manufacturing sites, diverting more than 47 million pounds of waste from landfills to date. The company continues its longstanding partnership with Keep Cincinnati Beautiful and 100 percent of Cincinnati Public Schools are now participating in this collaborative effort and learning the importance of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”

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The American Beverage Association is the trade association representing the broad spectrum of companies that manufacture and distribute non-alcoholic beverages in the United States.  For more information on ABA, please visit the association’s Web site at www.ameribev.org or call the ABA communications team at (202) 463-6770.

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