Coca-Cola India and Reliance Retail have launched a new sustainability initiative. Named ‘Bhool Na Jana, Plastic Bottle Lautana’, this initiative has been launched in Mumbai. This sustainability initiative aims at the collection of PET bottles at the Reliance retail stores. The collections will take place using reverse vending machines and collection bins.
The initiative has been launched as a pilot project in 36 stores. These include Smart Bazars and Sahakari Bhandhars in Mumbai and Delhi. The brands aim to expand the initiative to about 200 stores across the country by 2025. They also plan to collect about 5,00,000 such bottles per year in the pilot phase.
The sustainability initiative was formally flagged off at the Reliance Retail’s Smart Bazaar store in Santa Cruz. While Reliance Industries aims to recycle plastic materials, Coca-Cola India aims to provide discounts on their products. This initiative looks at a smooth waste collection system by engaging customers in responsible waste management.
The CEO of Grocery Retail at Reliance Retail Limited, Damodar Mall attended the event. He said, “Indian families have had the habit of not trashing milk pouches, plastic bottles, even newspapers, daily. We clean, collect them, and hand them over to collectors, who in today’s world are the unique front-end army of recyclers. As a modern retailer, we continue to encourage this habit with modern methods. Our pilot with our store shoppers, with the support of Coca-Cola India and Reliance Industries, is one such attempt we plan to pursue with our wide network of stores.”
Greishma Singh, Vice President for Customer and Commercial Leadership, at Coca-Cola India and Southwest Asia was also present. She said, “Through this partnership and platform, we are delighted that we can generate awareness and provide shoppers a convenient way to recycle their PET bottles. Partnerships with retail, government, civic societies, and consumer-centric ideas like this one are a powerful multiplier for progress on collection, recycling, and reuse.”
While this initiative has been launched in the two cities, it remains to see if the same will be implemented in the NER.
