As we continue to increase our focus on recycled PET material and full circularity, we are deepening our relationships with both customer partners and suppliers of post-consumer recycled PET material. We are excited about this development and the success that it’s having in the market. In that process, we are not only repurposing recycled bottles but also our own and others’ thermoformed packaging. In our Direct Pack Recycling facility, we processed 33.8 million pieces of thermoformed packaging, which is 4 times as many as in 2020, and 955.3 million pieces of PET bottles last year.
Since 2011 when we started measuring our rPET usage, we have used the equivalent of 9.8 billion recycled bottles, which is the same as saving 305 million pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere. In other terms, it means saving energy enough to power 24,114 households or taking 29,357 cars off the road for a year.