Coca Cola India and Zepto, a fast-commerce company, have jointly announced an expansion of their program on Monday. This initiative enables customers to conveniently return and recycle empty PET bottles from any brand by leveraging Zepto’s extensive delivery network.
In November of last year, the ‘Return and Recycle’ program was initiated as a 60-day pilot in specific areas of Mumbai.
Vinay Dhanai, Zepto’s Chief Operations Officer, said, “We got an overwhelming customer response from the pilot. In the first month itself, we recycled over 100 kg of PET bottles, with less than ten stores. It has only scaled since then.”
The program is being scaled up, and as part of the expansion, collection bins will be deployed at hundreds of Zepto delivery hubs in key cities such as Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, and Kolkata. This will enable customers in these locations to conveniently return and recycle empty PET bottles through the program.
The collaboration between Coca-Cola India and Zepto aims to foster a circular economy for plastic by fostering connectivity among all stakeholders involved in the PET recycling value chain.
“The process is unique and simple. We provide consumers who want to return any sort of PET bottles a touch point via our app. This tab is available post checkout and prepayment. After the consumer selects the option, one of our last mile delivery partners gets a notification for the same,” said Dhanani.
Coca-Cola has set up designated bins at dark stores where delivery partners collect bottles from customers and deposit them. These bottles are then recycled at a later stage.
“It is pretty easy to scale. In the future, this touch point can be at multiple places in the app, to improve engagement through multiple modes,” Dhanani said.
Abhishek Gupta, Chief Customer Officer for India and SWA OU at Coca-Cola Company, said, “This is a first of its kind partnership where we are trying to bring sustainability into our core, everyday operations.
“This model is providing us with a digital multiplier to drive awareness and collection while meeting the needs of socially conscious consumers.”
“It is a very impactful use case designed to integrate Coca Cola’s aims of plastic circulatory and a world without waste, and Zepto’s best-in-class convenience and last mile delivery model,” he said.
Greishma Singh, Vice President of customer and commercial leadership for Coca-Cola India and Southwest Asia, said, “With the ‘return and recycle’ initiative across India, we are furthering the company’s global goal of creating a world without waste.”
