TORONTO, Canada – The Coca-Cola Company in Canada is announcing a partnership with the Canadian not-for-profit, Pollution Probe, on its Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup initiative, the largest initiative of its kind in North America. As part of its partnership, The Coca-Cola Company is sponsoring a new remote-controlled, mobile waste collector called a PixieDrone that will help Pollution Probe collect floating debris, including plastic, flowing into the Great Lakes.
The Coca-Cola Company is supporting the piloting of technology which will help remove plastic and other debris found in the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater system in the world. The drone was tested on Lake Simcoe, along the waterfront in Barrie, Ontario and will later be used at other Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup locations across the Great Lakes region starting Spring of 2025.
“We are proud to support Pollution Probe on this important initiative”, said Avi Yufest, Senior Director, Public Affairs, The Coca-Cola Company in Canada. “Our company recognizes its responsibility to help address the plastic waste crisis. Projects like this, in addition to packaging innovations and recycling efforts, are one of the ways we are working to help keep our waterways and environment clean from plastic debris.”
The Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup, an initiative of Pollution Probe and the Council of the Great Lakes Region, currently operates at more than 150 sites across the Great Lakes, including the St. Lawrence River and Lake Simcoe, working alongside more than 105 collaborators. The new PixieDrone will join over 135 other plastic capture technologies already deployed by the initiative throughout the Great Lakes.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to work together with committed partners like The Coca-Cola Company to increase the impact of our collective efforts to end plastic pollution in the Great Lakes.” said Christopher Hilkene, CEO, Pollution Probe. “The addition of the PixieDrone to our network of capture technologies will allow us to visit even more locations and communities, and to remove significantly more plastic from the environment.”
The Coca-Cola PixieDrone will target floating debris in all forms including organic, plastic, glass, metal, paper, rubber, etc. and can collect approximately a bathtub’s worth of waste (160 litres) in a single 6-hour charge.
Data and information on the types and amounts of plastic removed are collected and analyzed to better understand the plastic pollution profile for the Great Lakes region.
To date, the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup initiative has already reported filtering an estimated 12.2 billion litres of water and removed nearly 200,000 pieces of floating waste including plastic debris, bottles, cigarette butts, food wrappers and more. The majority of the plastic removed to date are microplastics, including small plastic fragments, foam pieces, and pre-production plastic pellets – highlighting that even little bits can become a big problem.
In addition to supporting the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup, The Coca-Cola Company is also supporting Pollution Probe’s Turning the Tides: Emerging Leaders Against Plastic Pollution program, which aims to empower young adults to take positive, tangible action to end plastic pollution in their local communities.
This partnership is one of several that supports The Coca‑Cola Company’s World Without Waste initiative.
