Coca-Cola made news in April when it announced it planned to turn its recycled plastic bottles into clothing. That month, Drink 2 Wear T-shirts made of old bottles began appearing on Wal-Mart's racks. To hear Scott Vitters and John Shero tell it, that's just the beginning of the new, greener Coke. The company has announced a goal of recycling or reusing 100% of its bottles and cans in the U.S. and has built the world's largest bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, S.C., and has created Coca-Cola Recycling, which is focused on collecting and recylcling bottles, cans and other packaging materials. The company also has reduced Dasani's packaging by 30% since its inception and introduced "short-cap enclosure" on Coke brands, which the company asserts saved more than 80 million tons of plastic in 2007. Vitters and Shero, Coke's director of sustainable packaging and director of licensing strategy, respectively, corresponded with Brandweek news editor Kenneth Hein via e-mail. Here are some excerpts:

Brandweek: How are the shirts selling? Were people surprised you can get a shirt made from plastic?
John Shero: Consumers have been surprised by the softness and feel of the shirts. Sales have been very positive; online sales have been particularly successful.

BW: What other types of recycling programs are you looking at?
Scott Vitters: The majority of beverage containers are still consumed in the home, so our primary focus is on municipal recycling programs. Given the next large areas of beverage consumption are at the office, at school or on the go (in the car), we are actively advancing programs in these areas.

In fall of 2007, we launched a recycling bin grant program with the National Recycling Coalition which we renewed in spring 2008 and will offer again this fall. So far, more than 150 organizations, including schools, community parks, recreation centers and government offices/buildings have received more than 5,000 recycling bins through this program."

BW: Will you launch any advertising promoting your environmental efforts?
JS: In partnership with Wal Mart, we advertised our "Drink 2 Wear" line of Coca-Cola T-shirts through prominent Wal-Mart store displays, point of purchase signage and TV, radio and print advertising (circulars primarily) that aired March 30-Earth Day. The media reinforced our commitment to recycling and the recyclability of our packaging.

BW: People call "green" a trend. Is it here to stay?
SV: Environmental stewardship isn't something new for us, but has been core to our business for many years. We recognize that the health of our business and the communities we serve is tied to the sustainability of our natural resources. While we are very pleased to see the increased marketing opportunities emerging with finding ways to connect to the rising wave of stakeholder interest in the environment, any related "trends" won't change our public commitments to continuously improve our environmental performance on areas where we have an impact and can make a difference. These include our commitment to water stewardship, packaging sustainability and climate/energy protection.

JS: We believe sustainable fashion is here to stay. We're eagerly encouraging consumers to return to us our bottles and cans and cardboard and other used stuff, so we can flip it around into cool, long-lasting fashion items that people want to wear, as a visible sign of their environmental concern and socially responsible consumption. If everyone realized that returning just one 20-ounce plastic bottle can help make a cap and that five can produce a T-shirt, we all might think twice before throwing them away. These fun products we're making merge trend with consciousness, reminding us that small steps—like recycling a few bottles—can help solve big problems . . . We want to motivate others to act.

A merchandise neck label such as "5 Inside" indicates the approximate number of assorted PET bottles recovered and incorporated into the finished apparel items. Accompanying graphics include subtle branding achieved through stylized depictions of the trademark contour bottle for Coca-Cola, to distinguish the rPET fashions from traditional Coca-Cola branded apparel and other items. The combined design elements and imprinted messages are intended to inspire action, by recycling beverage packaging into renewable, reusable products."

BW: Have you ever considered corn-based bottles and the like?
SV: We believe bio-based plastic materials offer tremendous long-term promise for enhancing the environmental performance of our packages. Instead of relying on fossil fuels, these innovative materials are produced using the natural sugar or dextrose from commonly grown plants. Coca-Cola has been working for over a decade to responsibly advance plant-based plastics (bio-polymers) technology.

However, as with any new package, including bio-based, we have been very careful to understand the full life cycle of the package and its environmental before making it commercial. There have been three primary environmental factors that have kept us from commercializing a bio-based plastic bottle to date that we are actively working to overcome:

• Package Performance: Current market technologies have had significant performance limitations given their low gas barrier (doesn't hold carbon dioxide long) and low heat stability (can warp in warm temperatures). We are working to overcome these and other performance challenges now.

• Recycling Impact: Because the bio-based plastics look and feel so similar to regular PET [polyethylene terephthalate] plastics, they end up being collected together and contaminating the PET plastic recycling stream -which in turn can cause additional waste. Coca-Cola has been actively working to develop new state of the art recycling processing technologies to effectively separate these two different type of plastics, but today most recyclers do not have such technology in place. This issue is of particular concern to Coca-Cola since we are a key end user of recycled PET plastic back into bottles and will be opening the world's largest bottle to bottle PET plastic recycling plant next year.

• Value of the Use-Package: Life cycle analysis research conducted by Coca-Cola discovered early on that composting a bio-based bottle would be environmentally inferior to a PET plastic bottle (by composting a bottle you lose all the stored energy value). Based on this research, Coca-Cola has been focused on evaluating recycling processes and end-use markets that can be created to cost-effectively sustain the reuse of bio-based polymer bottles. Since these markets do not currently exist, the majority of bio-based packages launched today will simply be treated as waste and thrown into landfills.

We have also worked on other types of bio-based packaging such as cold and hot beverage cups, lids and straws. Since our first pilot of renewable cups at the 2002 Winter Olympics, we have continued to expand our use of bio-based, including making a branded bio-based cup option available for our customers. We have also been actively involved in programs to enhance the availability of community composting programs given that research has shown composting to be an environmentally effective mechanism for managing cup waste.

We have an extensive amount of research in this issue area that we would be happy to share with those interested.