PepsiCo elaborates on new green PET bottle technology

Denise Lefebvre, director of Advanced Research – Beverage Packaging, for PepsiCo reveals additional details on the announcement of a 100% plant-based PET bottle expected to pilot in 2012.

Denise Lefebvre
Denise Lefebvre

In the soft drink wars, a new battle is being waged. In March, PepsiCo threw its hat into the sustainable soft-drink packaging ring, one-upping The Coca-Cola Company’s 30% plant-based PET PlantBottle with one PepsiCo claims will comprise 100% renewable resources. Whereas Coke’s PlantBottle is made with 30% sugarcane, PepsiCo says it will create a PET bottle that uses materials such as switch grass, pine bark, and cornhusks. In the future, the company says it will broaden the renewable sources used to create the bottle to include orange peels, potato peels, oat hulls, and other agricultural byproducts from its foods business.

When asked about the development at the Sustainable Packaging Symposium 2011, The Coca-Cola Co.’s Scott Vitters, general manager of the PlantBottle Packaging Platform, noted that Coke has proven in a lab environment that it is possible to create a PET bottle with 100% renewable resources. “The question is, is it scalable and sustainable,” he asked.

PepsiCo believes it is. In an exclusive interview with Greener Package, PepsiCo’s Denise Lefebvre, director of Advanced Research – Beverage Packaging, talks about PepsiCo’s development of a 100% plant-based PET bottle and its plan to begin pilot production of the package in 2012.

Greener Package: How long has PepsiCo been developing this new package?

Denise Lefebvre: We have been focusing on the research for a couple of years, but we really honed in on it significantly in the past six months.

GP: Did an internal team at the company develop the technology, or were you working with a technology company?

Lefebvre: I would say it’s a combination of both.

GP: Did you consider other options such as PLA? Why or why not?

Lefebvre: When PLA first came out years ago, it was reviewed for beverages. It is not considered an acceptable solution for two reasons. One is that PLA does not meet the standards for our beverage’s barrier requirements or product quality. Then it [PLA] is also disruptive to the recycling stream.

GP: Were there other technologies that were investigated for a solution?

Lefebvre: We are always looking at and monitoring what’s going on in this area because there is so much activity and such an opportunity. So we are continuously monitoring, but there is nothing significant on the radar.

GP: How does converting your PET bottles into plant-based PET fit into the company’s sustainability strategy around its packaging?

Lefebvre: We used the five R’s as a guide for our sustainability strategy, but with regards to PET, we focused significantly on reduction, recycling, and then in this case, it’s renewable. So first of all, we want to reduce the amount that we would use, whether it’s bio-based or fossil-based, which involves lightweighting and things of that nature. Then we want to increase the post-consumer recycled content significantly. Right now, we are at 10% recycled content, the highest in the industry and have been for many years.

As a result of our new program, the Promise of PepsiCo, with a recycling program to incentivize people to recycle more – that’s another prong in that piece. So first reduction and then recycling. So if you’ve got whatever you’ve captured, you are going to renew it again before you buy anything new, right? Last prong is if we have to buy any resin, which is obviously in this case virgin resin, we want to make sure it’s from renewable sources.

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