To cap it all: Coca-Cola gives plastic bottles a second life

Asia – Coca-Cola has released a series of inventive bottle caps that turn empty bottles into functional items such as water squirters and pencil sharpeners.

The 2ndLives campaign is a response to Southeast Asia’s plastic bottle problem. In countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, discarded bottles litter beaches and pollute water supplies with harmful chemicals.

Asking the question ‘What if empty Coke bottles were never thrown away?’, advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather China produced 16 innovative bottle caps turned into items such as paintbrushes and soap dispensers, to give empty Coke bottles a second life as a useful object.

Coca-Cola will give away 40,000 of the caps free with drinks purchases in Vietnam, before rolling out the campaign to Thailand and Indonesia.

LS:N Global first predicted the rise of Conscience Commerce in 2011. For more on its latest iterations, read our Innovate on Toms’ brand of One for One retail and watch our interview with Toms founder Blake Mycoskie.