PopTech : Blog : Ecomaterials Lab: Recycling Pepsi's new "green" bottle

Ecomaterials Lab: Recycling Pepsi's new "green" bottle

Kiley Lambert ( Bio / Posts ) | Monday, March 21, 2011 UTC

PopTech's weekly Ecomaterials Labs series is part of our ongoing, focused look at next-generation sustainable materials innovation.

The new 100 percent plant-based bottle PepsiCo announced last week is also going to be 100 percent recyclable. As in just-like-your-PET-water-bottle recyclable – in fact, they will even be able to go into the same recycling bin. This from PepsiCo:

Because the new 100 percent plant-based bottles are PET (identical to existing PET bottles, just plant-based versus petroleum-based), there will be no contamination of the recycling stream, and we strongly encourage consumers to recycle them in a Dream Machine or through another existing recycling program to help increase the U.S. beverage container recycling rate.

This is good news for recyclers who might worry about recycling stream contamination a la PLA, the plant-based plastic made primarily from cornstarch or sugarcane, which is toxic to PET streams. It's also welcome news for conscientious consumers who might fret about what exactly they should do with the new bottles when Pepsi rolls them out in 2012.

But, how green is the new bottle really? The company claims that: "Combining biological and chemical processes, PepsiCo has identified methods to create a molecular structure that is identical to petroleum-based PET (polyethylene terephthalate), which results in a bottle that looks, feels and protects its product identically to existing PET beverage containers."

So, what exactly are those chemical processes? That's what recycling advocates like Susan Collins, Executive Director of the Container Recycling Institute, would like to know.

"What is the life cycle analysis for the new bottle? What are the inputs to the process?" Collins said on a call late Monday afternoon. Absent a complete analysis of the production process, it's hard to make a call on how ecologically benign the production process of the new bottle actually is. "At this point, we don't know."

Obviously, no company that operates in the high-stakes, multi-billion dollar arena of processed food sales will ever be short on detractors or controversy. That PepsiCo is even trying to lead the way on recycling and degradability issues maybe means that environmentalists (if not consumer advocates) will have to reconcile their distaste for certain of PepsiCo's practices with what appear to be completely voluntary efforts to reduce the company's carbon footprint.

If nothing else, PepsiCo’s recycling initiatives and its new plant-based bottle will likely help the company increase brand awareness and keep a grip on its share of the market. Given that Pepsi now ranks third behind Coke and Diet Coke as the most popular beverage in the U.S., it seems unlikely that brand-loyal soda drinkers will make a switch based solely on how "green" PepsiCo is, though there might be room to poach some of the more eco-conscious soda consumers (if such an animal indeed exists).

No matter the outcome of the Coke vs. Pepsi wars (or the war being waged against soda in general), PepsiCo appears to be edging ahead in the eco-friendly public relations game – the compostable SunChips bag (now less noisy), the company’s pledge to cut carbon emissions and water consumption in its U.K. operations by 50% over the next five years, and the Dream Machines all appear to be genuine, and genuinely admirable, attempts at softening PepsiCo's environmental impact.

The Dream Machine, announced last year, is part of PepsiCo’s self-described “mission to deliver sustainable growth.” To achive its goal of creating partnerships that promote the increase of the U.S. beverage container recycling rate from 34 percent to 50 percent by 2018, PepsiCo created the Dream Machine recycling initiative in partnership with Waste Management, Keep America Beautiful and Greenopolis.
As part of this program, thousands of interactive kiosks and static bins will be deployed at high-traffic, public locations around the country to give Americans more convenient access to on-the-go recycling receptacles. PepsiCo just announced this month that Washington D.C. has become the first municipality to partner with Dream Machine, putting a total of 363 bins on the streets of downtown D.C.