The British Plastics Federation has thrown its weight behind a promise from Coca-Cola to use recycled PET in its bottles, saying “It is pleasing to see Coca-Cola taking leadership on including recycled content.”

The world’s largest soft drinks company has upped its target for use of rPET in bottles from 40 to 50 per cent.

The announcement comes after Coke’s U-turn on implementing bottle deposit return schemes. After years of denouncing a scheme introduction to the UK, it made a volte-face, after the Scottish government moved to start bottle deposits.

At a recent resource meeting at the Scottish Parliament organised by the Holyrood magazine, Coca-Cola stated: “The time is right to trial new interventions such as a well-designed deposit scheme for drinks containers, starting in Scotland where conversations are under way.”

Coca-Cola said it would hit its 50 per cent target by investing millions of pounds in its new bottle recycling plant on the site of the former RAF Hemswell in Lincolnshire.

The decision by Coca-Cola has not placated groups critical of the drinks giant – Fiona Nicholls, of Greenpeace UK, described the move as ‘all fizz’. She said: “Upping their recycled content target by ten per cent is straight up not good enough. For this announcement to have had any kind of clout, this figure needed to be so much more impressive. Coke are the world’s biggest soft drinks brand, but they are lagging behind others. 100 per cent content is completely realistic and we should expect nothing less from Coke, who produce 100 billion bottles each year.”

The BPF maintains that plastic bottles are only a small fraction of litter - bottles are two per cent of the overall litter composition, according to an INPEN and Keep Britain Tidy Litter  Composition Survey, 2014.