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The GGGI Cambodia team and Coca Cola Cambodia Join Hands to Scale Up Plastic Recycling in Battambang City

Stack of plastic bottles for recycling against blue sky

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, December 9, 2019 – Ms. Karolien Casaer-Diez, GGGI Cambodia’s Country Representative and Mr. Sophea Ros, country legal and PAC director of Cambodia Beverage Company Ltd Coca Cola, signed an agreement on increasing plastic recycling in Battambang city.

GGGI worked with the municipality of Battambang and the National Council for Sustainable Development in the past year to identify a set of measures to increase waste recycling in the city, addressing segregation, collection, transport and on-sell of products as well as improved integration of formal and informal sectors. The city has now initiated the implementation of these measures, starting with plastic recycling in schools. Under the agreement, Coca Cola will provide equipment to the schools and the parties will work together to develop messaging and undertake awareness raising in schools.  GGGI Cambodia will continue to work with local waste recycling businesses and starts-ups to provide coaching on sales strategies, financial planning and business readiness.

In 2018, Coca Cola announced a set of environmental goals to reach by 2030: to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every can or bottle of Coca Cola sold, to increase the recycled materials it uses in its products to an average of 50 percent and to make all of its packaging recyclable. In Cambodia, the company has already been providing equipment to schools in Kampong Thom province for this purpose.