Completed on time and on budget, the £15 million facility is a first for Great Britain, and brings the recycling process full-circle, with used plastic packaging sorted and reprocessed domestically, before returning to GB shelves as part of another bottle.

Opened by Environment Minister Lord Taylor of Holbeach, this morning, the Continuum Recycling plant will more than double the amount of bottle-grade recycled plastic (rPET) previously created in Britain, and will allow CCE to meet its commitment to use 25% rPET in all its bottles by the end of 2012. The factory is located at ECO Plastics’ existing site in Lincolnshire, which, with the additional capacity, becomes the world’s largest plastics reprocessing facility.

Continuum Recycling will be used this summer by Coca-Cola as part of an initiative to collect Coke and additional PET soft drinks bottles and turn them back into new bottles on the shelves within six weeks.

“Our investment in Continuum Recycling shows that we are serious about setting the industry standard for sustainable packaging,” said Simon Baldry, Managing Director of Coca-Cola Enterprises. “Today’s opening of this £15m state-of-the-art facility will transform recycling in this country and ensure that we achieve our ambition of incorporating 25% recycled PET in our plastic bottles.”

David Stubbs, Head of Sustainability at LOCOG said that the plant was a significant landmark on the way to trying to deliver a zero waste to landfill Olympic Games. “We want to use the Games to inspire a generation on sustainability issues and that means businesses too.”