Coca-Cola: Pakistan’s First Plastic Road

Coca-Cola Pakistan launched the country’s first plastic road. A 1-kilometer road patch was developed at Ataturk Avenue, in Islamabad, as a pilot project for re-carpeting which used 8-10 tons of plastic waste. Lotus was tasked to communicate this first-of-its-kind project in the country. Our goal was two-pronged. One to highlight the fact that locally sourced innovative ideas can be turned into a scalable reality, and two to bring together the community, especially the country’s youth to create awareness that this generation is very conscious about the climate and environment crisis and wants the government, and the brands they interact with to play their part in towards building sustainable shared communities. To achieve this, we developed a 360-degree communications strategy that included print, electronic, and digital media. In the pre-hype phase, we included the mass press release circulation when the initial MoU was signed between the partners. The second leg of the pre-hype was done closer to the inauguration of the plastic road and included the placement of native articles in digital publications that explained the key technical details that went into the execution of the project in layman’s language and the overarching plastic waste issue that this innovation can help tackle. Followed by this, the PR focus was on the official inauguration of the plastic road which was attended by the leadership of all the partner organizations, government representatives, activists, and students. The third leg of our strategy was to not let the hype around the project die out with time, to keep it alive in conversations about the subject, and be a continuous source of inspiration for any individual or organization working on ideas to help our environment and add to the circular economy. Pakistan’s First Plastic Road by Coca-Cola made headlines nationwide and was picked up by select international publications as well. The hashtag #CleanGreenPakistan made the top Twitter trend for the day. Additionally, many other government bodies reached out to the team to explore partnership opportunities through which they can replicate the technology in other parts of the country as well. The plastic road is time and again referenced during key discussions on sustainability initiatives in the country as a success story and something that the projects being thought of, need to achieve.