Botol cites PET collection boost in Vietnam

Reverse vending machine (RVM) brand Botol, which features a shredder within each unit, has connected with soft drink bottler Coca-Cola Vietnam to place nearly four dozen of its RVMs in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

According to Max Craipeau, founder of Singapore-based Botol and plastics recycling and trading firm Greencore Resources/SEArcular, some 45 Botol machines are operating in the city of nearly 9 million people, “and hundreds more in the pipeline for 2025 in Ho Chi Minh City and beyond.”

Craipeau tells Recycling Today the machines have been well received and highly utilized in retail stores and locations such as university campuses. “In October, our top performing machine, which was placed in partnership with Coca-Cola Vietnam, collected 50,365 bottles, which in tons translated into 1.1 metric tons collected by one single Botol RVM.”

Botol and Craipeau say their RVMs with internal shredders change the financial landscape of logistics tied to collecting and transporting empty polyethylene terephthalate (PET) beverage containers.

Machines can be serviced less frequently and while picking up a greater amount of material when PET shreds are collected versus empty, whole bottles, says Craipeau.

In Ho Chi Minh City, Craipeau says Botol also has the advantage of a small radius closed loop arrangement. “We have partnered with the largest rPET food-grade recycler in Vietnam, Duy Tan, to ensure a bottle-to-bottle, fully circular application with the flakes produced by our RVMs,” says the entrepreneur.

The Coca-Cola and Botol partnership is part of a Coca-Cola Vietnam and Cambodia program called “Our Bottles Can Live Many Lives,” according to an online article by The Saigon Times.

Through that program and a wider “World Without Waste” strategy, Coca-Cola globally intends to collect and recycle the equivalent volume of every bottle and can it sells by 2030 and use a minimum of 50 percent recycled content in its packaging by the end of the decade.

In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, Craipeau says Botol is “in active discussions with several countries in the region, and even beyond Southeast Asia, for thousands of Botol RVMs” to be placed in the next several years.