Coca-Cola has joined Belfast City Council and environmental charity Hubbub to launch Belfast #CircleCity, a new on-the-go recycling initiative that is being rolled out in Belfast city centre, made possible with funding from The Coca-Cola Foundation.
Details
The scheme was previously introduced across Dublin city centre and through funding from The Coca-Cola Foundation is now being introduced to Belfast.
As part of the initiative, 25 bright and colourful recycling bins have been installed across Belfast city centre and a number of public parks. The three-month trial will make it as easy as possible for residents and visitors to recycle plastic bottles and cans and therefore improve recycling rates.
Belfast #CircleCity follows on from similar successful pilot projects since 2018 including Dublin, Leeds and the London borough of Lambeth. Across the previous pilot projects, over 2.5 million plastic and glass bottles and cans were collected and recycled. In the recent campaign in Lambeth, the campaign saw a 70% reduction in contamination (i.e. non-recyclable material in the recycling bins), whilst increasing the quantity of recycling by 140% and the new campaign in Belfast hopes to boost recycling and also reduce contamination.
Welcoming the initiative Agnese Filippi, country manager, Coca-Cola Ireland, said, "At Coca-Cola, we're committed to realising our ambition of a world without waste, by collecting and recycling a bottle or can for each one we sell by 2030. That requires a focus on the entire lifecycle of our products - from how bottles and cans are designed and made, to how they're collected and recycled and repurposed. We were delighted to be able to launch this campaign in Dublin and now have the opportunity to expand the campaign to Belfast. Through the Belfast #CircleCity campaign which is funded by The Coca-Cola Foundation, we want to make it easier for the public to recycle more while they move around the city centre. Raising awareness of the importance of on-the-go recycling is an important step towards creating a closed loop system that eliminates waste. This is just one of the actions we're taking to help build a circular economy for plastic bottles and cans including working towards the introduction of the deposit return scheme."
Beau Zilesnick, project lead at Hubbub, said, "We're really excited to roll out Belfast #CircleCity as part of our ongoing work to encourage recycling on-the-go. With eye-catching bins now in place in twelve locations across the UK and Ireland we are creating consistency and making it easier for people to recycle while out and about. We're urging everyone to use the new recyclable bins to help us keep as much valuable plastic and aluminium as possible in the loop."
Additional Information
Belfast City Council will be working with Hubbub to measure the impact and effectiveness of the new bins. The results and learnings from Belfast #CircleCity will contribute to providing renewed insight to the Hubbub #InTheLoop toolkit, an in-depth guide on how to roll out successful recycling-on-the-go, to benefit other interested local authorities and organisations who can access the learnings and downloadable assets for free.
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