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Paper bottle 2.0

An 8.5-oz paper bottle used by a L'Oreal startup called Seed Phytonutrients was named a Diamond Finalist in the Dow Awards competition.

This molded pulp bottle was a Diamond Finalist in the Dow Awards competition.
This molded pulp bottle was a Diamond Finalist in the Dow Awards competition.

Developed by Ecologic Brands, the bottle is especially impressive because it has a Version 2.0 element to it. Remember, Ecologic had made plenty of headlines with its molded pulp paper bottle plus inner pouch of flexible film. But by 2015 or so, says Ecologic founder and CEO Julie Corbett, she and her colleagues had realized that the paper bottle format they were supplying to the likes of Nestle Purina and Seventh Generation was woefully suboptimal from a manufacturing efficiency standpoint. So they went back to the drawing boards.

The new and improved bottle says goodbye to the inner pouch and instead has a very thin extrusion blow molded liner that is fully recyclable and is made of 80% post-consumer HDPE. Corbett sees this new inner component as a step toward greater sustainability because it’s easier to incorporate PCR in a blow-molded part than it is with an extruded film.

Evenmore significant is a modification to the two molded pulp shells. Gone is a flange that used to require a glue that caused the fiber to fail prematurely. Now in place are interlocking tabs to bind the two shells together, an approach that is far more robust and reliable, says Corbett. Also notable is the presence of a band of tape that goes around the neck of the bottle. This helps the interlocking tabs keep the two shells together. It also adds top-load strength and keeps the HDPE neck finish in a fixed position when the threaded closure is torqued on.

Because the Seed Phytonutrient line includes shampoos and body washes, the bottle must also be shower-resistant. So a mineral extract that comes from clay is added to the pulp slurry prior to molding. In addition to giving the pulp enough water resistance to last in a shower environment for the life of the product, it acts as a natural anti-microbial agent, too. “You may begin to see early signs of deterioration towards the very end of use,” says Woodworth. “But keeping it waterproof forever is not the goal. We just want it to remain functional in the shower during its useful life.”

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