Beverage companies are taking on new strategies in regard to the goals of their recycling initiatives. One would be hard pressed to find a beverage company not involved in recycling, but the industry continues to expand existing recycling programs. Craft brewer Boulevard Brewing Co., Kansas City, Mo., had to expand its recycling efforts in order to become a zero-landfill facility in January. In 2009, Boulevard’s Founder and President John McDonald, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Krum and Technical Director Mike Utz became co-founders and principals of Ripple Glass, a glass recycling company, to help close the loop in the brewer’s glass bottle consumption.

Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo launched the Dream Machine Recycle Rally for the 2011-2012 school year.

Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo Inc. made its second $500,000 donation from its Dream Machine recycling initiative to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans (EBV) with Disabilities, a national program offering career training, education and job creation for post-9/11 U.S. veterans with disabilities. PepsiCo presented the check during a ceremony following the first quarter of the Veterans Day football game at Syracuse University, which is home to the Whitman School of Management and Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) that operates the EBV program.

Since 1997, communities across the country have marked America Recycles Day on Nov. 15. The American Beverage Association, Washington, D.C., used the occasion to reinforce that the beverage industry is committed to further minimizing its environmental footprint by reducing, reusing and recycling. The Aluminum Association, Arlington, Va., also noted its support of the day and reminded consumers to recycle all the aluminum they use in their everyday lives.

The Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta, released its eighth system-wide sustainability report that ranks the company at a self-declared B-plus level, according to the disclosure and reporting requirements of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The report’s highlights include the expanded availability of the company’s PlantBottle technology, improved water-use efficiency, carbon footprint reduction progress and philanthropic activities.

The Canadian Beverage Association, Encorp Pacific-Canada, Nestlé Waters Canada and the city of Richmond, British Columbia, announced that their recent Go Recycle! pilot public spaces recycling program resulted in a 27 percent reduction of beverage containers found in the waste stream.

Honest Tea, the Bethesda, Md. wholly owned subsidiary of The Coca-Coca Co., collected more than 15,000 empty plastic, glass and aluminum beverage containers during “The Great Recycle” event in New York City yesterday. The containers were collected in a 30-foot-tall recycling bin in Times Square.

Students recycled more than 4.5 million aluminum beverage cans from America Recycles Day, which was Nov. 15, 2011, through Earth Day on April 22 in the second annual Great American Can Roundup, a national recycling competition sponsored by the U.S. can industry.