The Coca-Cola Company's Partnership With The Ocean Cleanup In Full Throttle

The Coca-Cola Company has teamed with The Ocean Cleanup to stem the tide of plastic waste flowing from rivers into the world’s oceans.

Photo Insert: The Ocean Cleanup's Interceptors

Announced in June 2020, the partnership is working to deploy the Dutch organization’s portfolio of Interceptor™ Solutions in 15 river cleanup projects around the world.

The Coca-Cola system’s global reach, local relationships, and marketing expertise will help support The Ocean Cleanup’s mission to rid the world’s oceans of plastic and turn off the tap of new plastic entering the oceans.

Creating awareness about The Ocean Cleanup’s solutions to tackle the marine plastic pollution crisis—including additional partners and investors—will help speed the deployment of Interceptor and waste management solutions in critical rivers around the world.

Local Coca-Cola teams are lending a hand in countries where Interceptor solutions are deployed, as well as many others in the pipeline, with a regional focus to increase knowledge-sharing and collaboration. Initial deployments are clustered in southeast Asia and the Caribbean.

The current goal of the partnership is to test and validate different Interceptor solutions and technologies in 15 river cleanup projects. This is a crucial early phase that will then help The Ocean Cleanup scale toward its goal of cleaning 1,000 rivers responsible for 80% of the river plastic entering the world’s oceans.

With operations in more than 200 countries and territories, the Coca-Cola system is uniquely positioned to support the local community engagement required to deploy new Interceptor solutions and to help process and recycle collected plastic in support of a circular economy.

“Getting an Interceptor into a river is like putting together a huge jigsaw puzzle,” said Steven Paalman, Rivers Director, Asia, The Ocean Cleanup.

“With support from Coca-Cola, our challenges are becoming less challenging over time. We’re learning together as quickly as we can to get wind under our wings and tackle the problem ahead of us, which is far too big to solve on our own. It’s been encouraging to see so much engagement, energy, and support from local Coca-Cola teams… I look forward to what we can accomplish together.”

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