Environment

Water is essential for Coca‑Cola HBC Bulgaria, as it is a basic ingredient of our products. Accordingly, the company is very responsible in using this most precious natural resource. Coca‑Cola HBC Bulgaria invests in research, monitoring and predicting water resources especially in the regions hosting our bottling plants.

The company undertakes measures to manage the risks arising from climate change. We focus on energy efficiency improvements in our production facilities, conversion to cleaner sources of energy, reducing emissions throughout the product lifecycle, promoting energy efficiency awareness and initiatives, and adaptation to climate change.

- 100% Green Electricity in Production
Our plants in Kostinbrod and Bankia use 100% green energy

A small step towards a cleaner world - the attached cap that everyone is talking about

We were the first to introduce attached caps to our products, as this is an important milestone on the Coca-Cola System's journey towards sustainable packaging and innovation and is part of the implementation of the new European Directive on Single-Use Plastics, whose product design requirements for caps come into force on July 3, 2024.

We started the transition to attached caps back in 2022 with the implementation of this innovation for Bankia mineral water. This is another real step in supporting our aspiration for 100% collection of our entire packaging. The gradual transition to attached caps began more than two years ahead of schedule, before the EU Directive requiring this from manufacturers came into force. The introduction of attached caps is an important milestone on our journey towards sustainable packaging and innovation.

The new caps are not only more sustainable, but also more convenient. They have been developed with a lot of research and development, in collaboration with suppliers and consumers. They have been tested in a laboratory to ensure that they offer real practical, hygienic and functional benefits. They meet the requirements of the regulation, but also the highest technical and safety standards.

• Facilitate the recycling of all packaging
• Increase the collection and recycling of plastic bottles and caps
• In 2023 alone, we released over 275 million bottles with caps attached

With real steps and actions like this, we believe that our mission of a "World without Waste" is achievable. No matter where it comes from, we want every package to have more than one life.

Packaging is indispensable when it comes to providing consumers with high-quality products and protecting these products from contamination. Packaging materials, however, have a heavy environmental footprint. Accordingly, we assess these impacts and work to mitigate them at every lifecycle phase, from production to safe disposal.

Since 2022, our Bankia plant has not landfilled municipal waste. We have contracts in place for the transfer of separately collected waste, and mixed municipal waste is taken to the Mechanical Biological Treatment Plant of the Sofia Municipality, where all separation, preparation for recycling and recovery activities are applied. All of this is the result of our long-term Action Plan to prevent landfilling and thus meet our zero waste targets (Road to Zero Waste in Bankia). 

Since 2022, at the Kostinbrod plant, we have achieved a lightweighting of the 1.25 liter PET bottles we use –from 34 grams to 31 grams. At first glance this is only 3 grams, but they make a huge difference on an annual basis, saving 75 tonnes of materials and 165 tonnes of CO2 emissions. We are also implementing a waste action plan at the Kostinbrod plant, where we have improved separate collection and recycling activities to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.