The Coca-Cola Company and The Ocean Cleanup join forces in Vietnam to tackle plastic pollution
Coca-Cola Vietnam and The Ocean Cleanup today announced that the Can Tho river in Can Tho City has been selected as one of 15 river locations around the world as part of a global partnership between the two organizations to use advanced technology to help stem the tide of plastic pollution entering oceans, by first intercepting and cleaning up waste in rivers, according to The Ocean Cleanup's release.
In 2021, The Coca-Cola Company became a global implementation partner for The Ocean Cleanup’s river project. The partnership brings the beverage company and the technological non-profit organization together in an exciting partnership to help clean up some of the world’s major rivers.
In addition to supporting the deployment of cleanup systems, the partnership also aims to engage and bring together industry and members of the public to help tackle plastic pollution. Using solar-powered technology, The Ocean Cleanup’s Interceptor™ river cleanup solution is a robot that extracts marine debris. The original Interceptor™ was unveiled in 2019 and is the first scalable solution to prevent plastic from entering the world’s oceans from rivers.
After years of planning, the Interceptor™ known as 003 or René, was launched into the Can Tho river for detailed testing last month. It is expected to become fully operational over the next few months, and is capable of extracting up to 50,000 kg of trash per day.
The river cleanup project deployment in Vietnam was made possible by the implementation support from the People’s Committee of Can Tho and the Can Tho Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DoNRE). Alongside the river cleanup, the partnership is also working with DoNRE and local operators to conduct river waste research to scale up the project where appropriate.
As part of the global implementation partnership, Coca-Cola in Vietnam will support the development of waste management solutions for collected debris and provide local support to The Ocean Cleanup such as engagement with local stakeholders.
As part of its World Without Waste vision, The Coca-Cola Company is working to ensure that all of the material it uses in its packaging is collected and recycled, so that none of it ends up as waste. The Company has a global goal to help collect and recycle every bottle and can they sell by 2030.
In Vietnam, Coca-Cola is helping to support and drive locally relevant collection and recycling solutions. Coca-Cola Vietnam was one of the founding members of Packaging Recovery Organisation (PRO) Vietnam, a partnership with other leading companies, recyclers and government agencies to accelerate local packaging collection and recycling in support of a clean and green Vietnam.
About The Ocean Cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup develops and scales technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. They aim to achieve this goal by taking a two-pronged approach: stemming the inflow via rivers and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean. For the latter, The Ocean Cleanup is developing large-scale systems to efficiently concentrate the plastic for periodic removal. This plastic is tracked, traced through DNV’s chain of custody model to certify claims of origin when recycling it into new products. To curb the tide via rivers, The Ocean Cleanup has developed Interceptor™ solutions to halt and extract riverine plastic before it reaches the ocean. Founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, The Ocean Cleanup now employs a broadly multi-disciplined team of approximately 100. The foundation is headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.