HEINEKEN, the premium international beer, is aggressively pursuing a bottle buy-back programme as part of its 20/20 green strategy that has seen the brewer, Red Stripe, cop major global awards.

“We at Red Stripe are high on environmental sustainability and early next year, we will be changing the iconic Heineken bottle. What we are doing is taking as many of the existing bottles as possible out of the environment. The bottles will be crushed and shipped overseas to be recycled by our bottle manufacturing company to make our new and exciting bottles”, said assistant brand manager for Heineken, Imru James.

“We urge the citizens of Jamaica to return their bottles to all outlets that currently purchase our bottles; these are major wholesalers, liquor stores or our Red Stripe trucks and distribution centres,” he said.

The initiative is aggressively being undertaken to ensure that the new bottles are in the market for 2014, according to James, who said the campaign will soon be occupying digital space to generate more awareness.

Currently, Red Stripe is believed to be selling one million cases or 24 million bottles of Heineken a year.

“We are aiming to repurchase in excess of 50,000 cases or 1.2 million bottles over the next six weeks. We are paying $10 per bottle and $160 per empty crate, that is $400 for a full crate with 24 empty bottles,” he disclosed.

On this basis the number of bottles Red Stripe expects to recoup from the trade would have cost over $52 million.

Noting that procuring bottles is expensive, James said, “We believe in recycling our bottles and as an environmentally friendly company, we buy back the empties to ensure that we get them out of the environment and into our plant for reuse.”

Red Stripe is said to be the only company in Jamaica that sells beer and buys back the bottles. The Diageo-led Red Stripe made significant improvements in its bottling operation last year and this did not go unnoticed. The Jamaica brewery copped global awards for its safety and health programmes and efficiency in the use of water and carbon emission.

Through a Green competition launched in 2009 to share best practices in supply and procurement management, there has been renewed commitment by Red Stripe to drive improved environmental performance across the whole business as it pushes towards achieving its 2016 targets.