Ceres Fruit Juices will be introducing eco-friendly straws for some of its juice packs in an initiative aimed at reducing plastic waste.

Dhivana Rajgopaul | IOL

From September, all Ceres 200ml packs will move from plastic straws to paper straws.

PepsiCo Sub-Saharan Africa chief marketing officer Martin Neethling said: “A major challenge with plastic straws is that they are too lightweight to make it through the mechanical recycling sorter and therefore difficult to recycle. The only way to tackle this problem is to move away from plastic straws altogether. Hence Ceres’ introduction of eco-friendly straws for some of our juice packs.

“Ceres believes that there is an opportunity to change how the world produces, distributes, consumes and disposes of packaging in order to tackle the shared environmental challenges we face”.

Neethling said. “We are all aware that the pollution of our oceans is a contributor to climate change, a challenge which has been described as the greatest of our generation.”

Ceres will be hosting a round table discussion end September 2021 to mark International Coastal Clean-Up Day. Craig Foster, who produced and starred in the Oscar Award Winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, will chair and facilitate the session.

The discussion will focus on the protection of our marine environment and encourage communities to get involved in clean-up efforts in their areas.