GreenWire: Coca-Cola Co. has introduced new bottles that are made partially from plants, a move the company hopes will reduce its carbon footprint and better its image with environmentalists.
The new beverage container, which has “the same weight, the same feel, the same chemistry and functions exactly the same way” as a regular plastic bottle, according to a Coke spokeswoman, is made of 70 percent petroleum-based materials and 30 percent sugar cane-based materials. Traditional bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, the production of which consumed 17 million barrels of oil in 2006.
The “plant bottle” debuted at the Copenhagen summit in December and will appear in Vancouver in time for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games next month. The company hopes to sell 2 billion drinks in the new bottles this year.
A Coke-funded study out of Imperial College London found production of a plant-based bottle has a 12 percent to 19 percent smaller carbon footprint than a regular bottle. But critics say the real impact comes from consumers not recycling. Just 27 percent of PET containers were recycled in the United States in 2008.
Other companies also are entering the environmentally friendly packaging race. PepsiCo Inc. recently introduced a compostable bag made from plants for SunChips, and Nestlé is reducing the amount of plastic used in its bottles.
But plant-based bottles have shorter shelf lives than PET bottles and do not hold carbonation as well, industry experts say.
“It just doesn’t keep the product protected the same way that the current bottles do,” said Wade Groetsch, president of Blue Lake Citrus LLC, a juice processor. “It’s definitely a tradeoff.”
(Chris Herring, Wall Street Journal [subscription required], Jan. 24). – EL