Tan Bo Shi Tal - Bottles have value too!
Giving plastic bottles a chance at a second life
As a global beverage that inevitably uses and produces plastics everyday, Coca-Cola recognizes the need to take responsibility to reduce global plastic packaging waste. To tackle this issue, Coca-Cola launched its sustainable packaging initiative. The PET bottles used by Coca-Cola beverages today were designed to be recycled as recycled PET (rPET) to be reused as bottles or completely different new products.
Recycling is a global issue. However, its solutions start from local. The Tan Bo Shi Tal campaign, translated to “Bottles have value too,” was first piloted in 2023 to begin pushing for bottle recycling of plastic bottles within Myanmar. In 2024, Bridge came on board to roll out Tan Bo Shi Tal on a broader level to instill recycling behaviours in Myanmar consumers by educating them on the value of plastic bottles, to give these bottles a chance to be reborn, and keeping our environment waste-free!
With
Coca-Cola Myanmar
Objective
Create a 360 campaign to get more people to separate, return, and recycle their plastics at Tan Bo Shi Tal bins.
Demographic
15-40 years old residents of Ahlone, Kyimyindaing, Sanchaung, Kamayut, Hlaing townships in Yangon
Types of work
Branding, Strategy, Experience Design, Social Media, Behaviour Change, Production, Media & Influencer
Themes
Climate & Environment, Sustainability
Approach
The very first step to motivating recycling behavior is to make it easy. Through Tan Bo Shi Tal, consumers can begin their recycling journey by simply returning their used PET bottles to any Tan Bo Shi Tal recycling bin nearby. By highlighting the benefits of recycling, building online communities around recycling, and celebrating recycling achievements, Tan Bo Shi Tal takes advantage of the effect of peer pressure or “FOMO” to encourage recycling behaviours in wider audiences. Another push for recycling is the incentive program, where a consumer can win an instant scratch-and-win award by recycling bottles at the Tan Bo Shi Tal ambassador outlets and a chance to win an even bigger monthly award that includes a gold coin.
Collaborations
The Ambassador Outlets are local stores that have agreed to partner with Tan Bo Shi Tal to support our effort in making their townships waste-free. The 100 ambassador outlets spanning across 5 townships in Yangon, each equipped with a recycling bin, promotional dangler, and lucky draw coupon cards, act as the rPET bottle recycling point, making recycling easy and accessible to residents in the neighbourhoods. The ambassador outlets benefited from the TBST campaign by receiving free promotion on social media and the website as a crucial part of the recycling campaign, which attracted more customers to the stores. The recycling bins remain at the stores today after the campaign wrapped up, where they continue to collect bottles and sell them to junk stores as an extra source of income.
Social Media
From September 2024 to January 2025, TBST hosted an online campaign on Facebook to raise awareness about recycling and encourage consumers to return their PET bottles to specially designed bins at participating outlets by making the bottle collection points more visible online.
The content strategy focused on raising awareness about the importance of recycling while simultaneously motivating audience participation through incentives (both physical rewards & emotional wins) for returning PET bottles and by celebrating the recycling efforts of the participants. In addition to regularly rolled out recycling messages and incentive program campaigns, the online campaign branched out to mini-campaigns such as the “I Love My Township” to build up environmentally conscious communities across Yangon by tallying up numbers of bottles and encouraging the residents to show more love for their townships through recycling.
KOLs
We aimed to promote recycling as a fun and accessible activity through collaborations with four key KOLs, each with a strong record of supporting social change campaigns. The selections were made on the basis that they hold strong credibility that truly believed in the initiative and are great role models who resonate with and appeal to younger audiences.
Events
The campaign kicked off with an event that brought more than 500 participants. Through engaging in interactive games at the event, the participants were able to learn about four key steps involved in PET bottles recycling process: Segregation, Recycling, Breaking Down and Remaking. A mini exhibition was also hosted where people can learn about the lifecycle of rPET bottles in detail.
In addition to the main events, pop-up events were organised at the ambassador outlet to increase offline visibility in the neighbourhood and in collaboration with Strategy First International College to engage with a younger audience through fun activities and a panel discussion with experts, providing insights into Coca-Cola’s mission to reduce waste.
Results
