Holiday Stationstores and Coca-Cola Announce Away From Home Recycling Program

EAGAN, Minn., Oct 06, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- COKE | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Today Midwest Coca-Cola Bottling Company and Coca-Cola Recycling, LLC (CCR), announced a partnership with Holiday Stationstores to enable beverage container recycling at Holiday stores around the Twin Cities. Midwest Coca-Cola Bottling Company and CCR will work with the Recycling Association of Minnesota (RAM) to manage the program. Giant, bottle shaped recycling bins will be placed on each fuel island at Holiday Stationstores. Through vocational centers, RAM will employ adults with disabilities to pick up the materials and sort them at the designated sorting facility. Finally, the collected material will be returned to Midwest Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Eagan, Minnesota to be processed and recycled into new cans and bottles.

The recycling program will be up and running at ten Twin Cities Holiday locations by the end of October and at all 150 Twin Cities Holiday stores by the end of 2009.

"Holiday Sationstores strives to provide customers with a shopping experience that is unique to the convenience store industry. With Coca-Cola, RAM and the vocational centers, we are offering customers a convenient way to recycle while making a difference for the environment as well," said Holiday Companies Vice President of Merchandising, Larry Mitchell.

"Coca-Cola is committed to maximizing our use of renewable, reusable and recyclable resources, ultimately recycling the equivalent of 100 percent of our packaging," said John Burgess, President of Coca-Cola Recycling, LLC. "This partnership will make it convenient for consumers to recycle away from home and it will help Coca-Cola close the loop by recovering more material and using it to increase the recycled content of our packages."

According to Ellen Telander, Director of the Recycling Association of Minnesota, "Most Minnesotans recycle at home, but studies show that recycling rates decrease dramatically when people are away from home. We hope this program will reverse that trend."

Holiday Stationstores is a recognized leader in the convenience store/gas station industry with 440 stores located throughout 12 states in the northern tier region of the United States: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington and Alaska. Holiday distinguishes itself in the marketplace through its exceptional Holiday Pantry food programs and is the sole distributor of Blue Planet gasoline, the clean air choice leader.

Midwest Coca-Cola Bottling Company, based in Eagan, is an operating unit of Coca-Cola Enterprises, the world's largest marketer, distributor and producer of Coca-Cola products. The company employs approximately 1,500 people in the state of Minnesota, including 1,000 at the Eagan facility.

Based in Atlanta, Coca-Cola Recycling is dedicated to recovering and recycling packaging materials used in North America -- including polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, aluminum, cardboard and plastic film. Coca-Cola Recycling is working to recover and recycle the equivalent of 100 percent of the packaging produced by the Coca-Cola system in the United States. Founded in 2007, Coca-Cola Recycling is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE), the world's largest marketer, distributor, and producer of bottle and can liquid nonalcoholic refreshment. CCE sells approximately 80 percent of The Coca-Cola Company's bottle and can volume in North America and is the sole licensed bottler for products of The Coca-Cola Company in Belgium, continental France, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Monaco, and the Netherlands.

The Recycling Association of Minnesota (RAM) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization with more than 200 members from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. RAM is the Minnesota affiliate of the National Recycling Coalition. RAM is committed to promoting resource conservation through waste prevention, reuse, recycling, composting and purchasing practices using the most cost effective and environmentally sound methods available in Minnesota.

SOURCE Midwest Coca-Cola Bottling Company

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