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Destination: zero waste

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Coca-Cola’s numbers also soared with Greener Package Awards judges, who put them in one of the top spots in the Food & Pharmaceutical Packaging category. Says judge Sharon Reiter Lindberg of Unilever North America, PlantBottle is “a totally innovative way to envision the bottles of the future and deserves an A+ in sustainable initiatives in packaging.”

The key to the PlantBottle’s innovation is that it is “the first commodity resin partially derived from plants that is fully recyclable in community programs,” relates Mike Schultheis, Coca-Cola team lead for Sustainable Packaging Design. The bottle, constructed of 100% PET, uses monoethylene glycol (MEG) derived from plants for 30% of its content. In an early Life Cycle Assessment of the PlantBottle, data showed that even with an un-optimized supply chain, it provided a 10% to 20% improvement in material carbon footprint over petroleum-derived PET bottles.

The PlantBottle’s renewable portion is currently sourced from Brazilian sugarcane-derived ethanol, which is classified as an “Advanced Bio-Feedstock” by the EPA. According to Vitters, work is now underway on the next generation of PlantBottle, which will use instead a feedstock made from cellulosic ethanol, or plant waste-produced ethanol, as it becomes available.

Coca-Cola’s “North Star,” says Vitters, is to have 100% of the new resin purchased contain up to 30% plant-based material by 2020. Key to this journey, he relates, will be the company’s efforts at building the supply chain and expanding capacity for the material around the world.

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