Coca-Cola’s innovative renewable, recyclable, plant-based plastic bottle

The "PlantBottle", made partially from plants, is fully recyclable, has a lower reliance on non-renewable resources, and reduces carbon emissions, compared with petroleum-based PET bottles.
Traditional PET bottles are made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource. The new bottle is made from a blend of petroleum-based materials and up to 30 percent plant-based materials.

"The Coca-Cola Company is a company with the power to transform the marketplace, and the introduction of the "PlantBottle" is yet another great example of their leadership on environmental issues," said Carter Roberts, President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund, U.S.

Before we describe the PlantBottle in detail, let’s have a look at the sustainability and recyclability of renewable resources first. Is the PlantBottle a “great example” as the World Wildlife Fund claims?

Apart from overflowing landfills and shameful dispositions in nature, petroleum based plastic is responsible for the deaths of millions of sea creatures and has, as the story goes (I have never been able to check it) created a plastic garbage island twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

In the industrialized world, packaging for all types of products has become both necessary and truly ubiquitous. As more people become "modern consumers" around the world, it is an increasing burden on producers, individuals, and the environment. According to a new study from Pike Research, sustainable packaging is a fast-growing segment of the global packaging industry, and will grow to 32% of the total market by 2014, up from just 21% in 2009.

"The $429 billion global packaging industry is huge but extremely fragmented, with no clear market leaders," says Pike’s managing director Clint Wheelock. "As such, the move toward sustainable packaging represents a broad-based effort by manufacturers, retailers, industry groups, and governments to promote the design of minimal packaging that can be easily reclaimed. A tremendous amount of innovation is going into reducing energy requirements to manufacture packaging and using more recyclable and compostable materials, but there is still a long way to go."

The market intelligence firm forecasts that plastic-based packaging, which represents 35% of all materials used, will be the fastest-growing sector of the sustainable packaging market over the next five years.

But there is a little problem, as Napcor (National Association for PET Container Resources) calls for restraint in the use of degradable additives in PET packaging. Napcor, the trade organization for the PET packaging industry, is concerned that no data has been made publicly available to substantiate or document:
1) the claims of degradability of PET resin products containing degradable additives;
2) the effect of degradable additives on the quality of the PET recycling stream;
3) the impacts of degradable additives on the products made from recycled PET; and
4) the true impact on the service life of these products.

In this light Napcor urges manufacturers of PET resin and packaging to refrain from introductions of degradable additive-containing products until data is made available for review and verification.

In 2007, 1.4 billion pounds of post-consumer PET containers were recycled in the United States. The post consumer recycled PET infrastructure depends on the quality of the recyclate and its suitability for a variety of next-life product applications. The value of recycled materials, such as PET, is an important economic driver for curb-side recycling programs throughout the country.

Aside from the potential impacts on recycling, Napcor questions the value of the concept itself. Whether or not it’s proven that packaging will safely degrade in landfills, or as roadside or marine litter, the value of the inherent energy used in the manufacture of plastic packaging is lost, not recaptured as it is through a recycling and re-manufacturing process.

“Even if a package were to disappear or fragment - and we’ve not yet seen this evidence - it would not make the package sustainable, nor does it provide any positive impacts in terms of greenhouse gas emissions or resource conservation,” said Mr. Sabourin, Napcor’s Executive Director. “Degrading plastic provides no useful nutrients to the soil, and the impacts to soil and sea of reducing the plastic to molecules using degradable additives is unknown.”

What does that mean for Coca Cola’s PlantBottle? In the first place, Coca Cola claims that, unlike other plant-based plastics, the PlantBottle can be processed through existing manufacturing and recycling facilities without contaminating traditional PET. So, apparently the material of the PlantBottle does not bio-degrade, but can be recycled without contaminating the PET recycling process.

The PlantBottle is currently made through an innovative process that turns sugar cane and molasses, a by-product of sugar production, into a key component for PET plastic. Coca-Cola states that it is also exploring the use of other plant materials for future generations of the PlantBottle.

Manufacturing the new plastic bottle is more environmentally efficient as well. A life-cycle analysis conducted by Imperial College London indicates the PlantBottle with 30 percent plant-base material reduces carbon emissions by up to 25 percent, compared with petroleum-based PET.

Coca-Cola North America will pilot the PlantBottle in select markets with Dasani water.

The PlantBottle is undoubtedly an interesting development, as it reduces carbon emissions by some 25% compared to petroleum-based bottles. That's a drastic cut in emissions considering the millions of Dasani bottles manufactured each year. It's a great marketing tool too, as Coca Cola plans on identifying the bottles with "on-package messaging and in-store point of sale displays".

Earlier this year, Coca Cola opened the world's largest plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in South Carolina. The plant will produce approximately 100 million pounds (45.359 mtons) of recycled PET plastic for reuse each year - the equivalent of nearly 2 billion 20-ounce (593 ml) Coca Cola bottles.

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Innovative Dispensing Bottle Caps for Sensitive Vitamins

It is generally known, that most vitamins and other nutrients are very sensitive and loose their power the moment they get mixed with a liquid, particularly water. And even worse the longer they stay mixed, the less efficiently vitamins and nutrients work.

One of the features a properly functioning ‘vitamin injection’ cap requires is the unavoidable extra space to house the rising volume which occurs when carbon dioxide releases from the liquid, which might end up to some 15%.

Recently two developments came to fruit solving this problem.

In April the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued VIZ Enterprises LLC of Atlanta, Georgia, a patent covering the VIZcap dosing and dispensing bottle cap. The VIZcap offers manufacturers of functional and energy drinks, spirits and pharmaceutical products the ability to create more fresher and potent beverages.

The VIZcap stores liquid and powder nutrients in an oxygen and moisture-restricted chamber situated in the bottle cap, until the consumer releases the still potent ingredients into the content of the bottle.

The system is simple to operate. Around the bottle cap with its transparent dome-shaped moisture-free chamber, in which the fresh ingredients are stored, sits a tamper-evident tear-strip, which should be removed, after which the plunger (the dome-shaped cap) can be pushed downwards and the ingredients are released into the liquid.

Besides the typical characteristic of a fresher and more powerful drink, the VIZcap features the appealing advantage that the vitamins and nutrients are visible in the clear dome where they are housed.

Formation Design, one of the most well-known industrial design companies, developed the VIZcap not only as an aesthetically pleasing, user-intuitive and flexible dosing and dispensing cap, but also as a bottle cap that could seamlessly run at existing bottling lines.
The VIZcap can be moulded and manufactured to fit any bottle size and can contain both large and small powder quantities.

VIZdrink doesn’t manufacture the bottle cap itself, but licenses its VIZcap technology to third parties to get it on the worldwide beverage market.

Is the VIZcap a development out of the blue without a first customer to use it, the second is a development instigated by the Croatian food company Cedevita and executed by the Dutch injection moulder Teamplast.

Cedevita is in Croatia a well-known quality brand for healthy vitamin drinks. For her newest product, Cedevita Gol, the company selected the Dutch injection moulder Teamplast to develop a dispensing bottle cap. The result: with a simple, rotation of the dispensing cap 26 gr vitamin powder is dispensed into the liquid of the bottle, creating a fresh, healthy, on-the-go bubbling multi-vitamin drink.

Since the communist downturn in 1992, the Croatian food brand Cedevita developed from a faceless brand, selling its vitamin powder in simple 1 en 1.5 kilo bags, to a creative commercially operated quality food brand with a western look, packing its products in shrink-sleeved plastic jars and introducing the new ready-to-go vitamin drink in a PET-bottle with an cleverly designed powder dispensing cap.
Mixing the liquid and the vitamins at forehand is useless as vitamins in dissolved status have a shelf life of only one day.

Teamplast developed a system which transfers a rotating movement into a linear one. The movement is activated by a handle which is connected to an oval disc with at the bottom a sharp knife-like point pinching the seal foil when the handle is moved.

The dispensing cap features two pieces: the, with an aluminium foil sealed ‘vitamin chamber’, including the handle with the pinching knife and the bottle cap itself.

The system works as follows: A device which picks up the top of the handle when rotated is located inside the cap. Moving the handle anti-clockwise (opening the bottle) pushes the knife down.
The beauty of the system is that activating the vitamin drink the consumer has only to exercise the common doings of opening a bottle, namely to turn the cap anti-clockwise to operate the ‘vitamin-system’ and to get access to the vitamin drink.

These powder dispensing closures offer many new market possibilities for the energy and healthy drinks sector, even dispensing pharmaceuticals or the ingredients in drinks known as ‘beauty foods’, ‘nutracosmetics’ or ‘neutraceuticals’. They feature all one characteristic: a separate dry storage, which avoids the ingredients to deteriorate, and to loose their glamour and power, before they are mixed with the liquid.

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The Fruity Bottle for AriZona Infused Water

Arizona Beverage Co., a brand of Ferolito Vultaggio & Sons, recently introduced Arizona Infused Water, a line of four lightly sweetened and flavoured waters. The waters are packaged in a proprietary 20-oz (600 ml) plastic bottle. A colourful lifelike illustration of fruit printed on a shrink sleeve covering the ball-shaped top of the bottle right under the bottle screw closure. Under the ball-shaped top the bottle is stretched, where a paper label is wrapped around the middle to give the illusion that the water drips through “the fruit stored in the ball”, before the water is consumed.

Constar International Inc., a producer of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic containers, designed and produced the imaginative package for the launch of Arizona's new Infused Water product.

Constar's challenge was to create a unique package that would help Arizona differentiate this new product in a market that is seeing a large number of new entrants. Due to the vacuum generated as a result of being hot filled, new and innovative vacuum absorption features had to be designed and developed. Arizona Beverages did not want to use the standard under-the-label vacuum panels common to most hot-filled beverages.


Using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) Constar manipulated the design to produce an innovative combination of functional elements including material distribution, horizontal ribs and three customized vacuum panels. The entire bottle geometry works to relieve the vacuum.

This design brings together a number of visual elements to create a distinctive look. The neck portion of the bottle is spherical and provides the right location for an eye-catching shrink label. The upper portion of the base section accepts a more traditional wrap-around label leaving the lower portion of the base for a unique use of "branding panels." These provide an easy grip feature for the consumer and reinforce the Arizona name, which is embossed in the centre of the vertically oriented panels.

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