Johann Hunt
When you think about plastic waste, your mind probably jumps to shopping bags or straws. But there’s another culprit hiding in plain sight: those clear plastic sleeves that wrap around every multipack of soda bottles at your local grocery store. Coca-Cola HBC, one of the beverage giant’s key bottling partners, is tackling this problem head-on with something deceptively simple yet genuinely groundbreaking—a cardboard handle called Lift Up that could change how we buy our favorite drinks forever.
The Innovation That’s Actually Just Smart Engineering
Lift Up isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s a fully recyclable, fiber-based handle and carrier system that replaces the plastic shrink wrap traditionally used on 1.5-liter soda multipacks. Created through a collaboration between Coca-Cola HBC, packaging company DS Smith, and machinery manufacturer Krones, this solution is currently being tested in the Austrian market. Consumers can grab their bottles, carry them home, and toss the cardboard handle straight into their recycling bin without a second thought.
The environmental math here is compelling. Traditional plastic packaging is manufactured from petroleum-based materials like oil and gas, contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. Every piece of plastic shrink wrap that ends up in landfills or even in our oceans represents a small environmental disaster. By eliminating these plastic components from millions of multipacks, Coca-Cola HBC is addressing a problem that most consumers never even thought to question. Marcel Martin from Coca-Cola HBC framed the move as part of the company’s ambitious goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040, stating plainly that they’ll keep innovating and investing to deliver drinks sustainably.
The Environmental Reality Check
Before anyone crowns this as the ultimate eco-solution, it’s worth understanding the full picture. Fiber-based packaging like Lift Up does carry its own environmental footprint. Trees must be harvested, processed, and transported, and industrial facilities still generate emissions during production. It’s not a magic bullet that makes environmental impact disappear. However, Sarah Billig, President of the Forest Stewardship Council, points out that these concerns can be significantly minimized through sustainably managed forests and renewable energy sources powering production facilities.
The key difference between cardboard and plastic waste comes down to what happens after you’re done with it. Cardboard biodegrades naturally and integrates back into environmental systems relatively quickly. Plastic, on the other hand, breaks down into microplastics that persist in ecosystems for centuries, contaminating water supplies, entering the food chain, and accumulating in ways we’re only beginning to understand.
What This Means For Your Weekly Shopping Run
For consumers, the change should be almost seamless. Lift Up handles are designed to be intuitive. You grab your multipack the same way you always have, but without wrestling with clingy plastic film or creating yet another piece of waste destined for the landfill. The rollout in Austria serves as a crucial testing ground to ensure the handles can withstand real-world conditions: grocery store handling, transport in car trunks, and the general chaos of getting groceries from store to home.
If successful, this innovation could ripple across Coca-Cola’s global operations and potentially influence the entire beverage industry. Other manufacturers watching this Austrian experiment closely will see whether consumers accept the change and whether the cardboard handles hold up to the demands of modern distribution systems. The stakes extend beyond just one company’s packaging choices—this represents a potential template for how major corporations can reduce plastic waste without sacrificing convenience or significantly increasing costs.