Pepsi Moving To Bottles Made of Plant Material

Master Moose writes "Pepsi unveiled a new bottle yesterday made entirely of plant material. The bottle is made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Ultimately, Pepsi plans to also use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business. 'This is the beginning of the end of petroleum-based plastics,' said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defence Council and director of its waste management project. 'When you have a company of this size making a commitment to a plant-based plastic, the market is going to respond.'"

Comments

glass is better

[Anonymous Coward]

1950 environmentalism > 2011 environmentalism

Re:glass is better

[MrEricSir]

I guess it's still the 1950's in Mexico, since they're still washing out and reusing glass bottles.

Re:glass is better

[rhook]

Not just Mexico, most of the world.

Re:glass is better

[bluemonq]

Glass = more weight = more diesel burned to transport

Re:glass is better

[Jessified]

Glass works for beer...it's best when you use local breweries and bottling facilities, then you don't need to transport that far. Companies like Corona have laser printed labels on their glass, and they buy the return of their bottles. They wash and reuse. It's probably creates less polution than manufacturing from scratch each and every time (even if the final product is biodegradable).

I laud their efforts. I suspect glass is still a good choice as well.

Re:glass is better

[bluemonq]

While you have a good point about the beer, I'm pretty sure Pepsico doesn't produce and/or distribute any beer.

Re:glass is better

[h4rr4r]

Too bad that is such a terrible beer, could non-terrible beer also use this system?

Or is it only useful for the sales of piss-water?

Re:glass is better

[MrHanky]

Oh, look! A beer snob!

Re:glass is better

[h4rr4r]

Not at all.
Corona is just that bad. Might as well buy some cheap American beer and water it down. Better for our economy too.

Re:glass is better

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, look! A beer bigot!

Re:glass is better

[h4rr4r]

Again wrong, Dos Equis Amber is ok. You could also buy that and water it down. That would not be good for the US economy but would save the average Corona drinker a fortune.

Re:glass is better

[Beelzebud]

Every bar in the U.S. does this with domestic beer. That's why you always see empty crates of bottles int he backroom, and sometimes along the walls. They have recycled beer bottles for decades.

Re:glass is better

[h4rr4r]

That was a joke. All the beer I drink and produce goes into glass bottles.

The Germans actually just wash and reuse their bottles, which is why almost every brand uses the same brown half liter bottles.

Re:glass is better

[Jessified]

It produces a liquid people consume? Why does that matter? Pepsi basically produces unfermented sugar water. Throw in some brewer's yeast and you would have a horribly tasting alcoholic beverage. (You can make a fine cider with ale or champagne yeast and fruit juice from concentrate. And by "fine" I mean it tastes reasonably well given the 30 cent per bottle cost.)

Again nothing wrong with their approach, just saying: glass, it seems, is a fine option as well, and it requires a heck of a lot less in the way of R&D.

Re:glass is better

[Jessified]

Plenty of fine beers use that system. I like Sleeman's myself.

There is one microbrew pub in Vancouver that sells re-sealable big glass bottles of their stuff (i.e. >1L) and you can bring your bottles back and get them refilled at a nice discount.

Re:glass is better

[Jessified]

I was just using Corona as an example because they have a semi-unique way of printing relatively permanent labels on their bottles. One disadvantage to using traditional labels is that for every recycle, you have to relabel the bottles. Corona just rewashes, refills and reseals.

Re:glass is better

[h4rr4r]

We do that were I live. 1/2 gallon, ~2L growlers are quite popular.

Re:glass is better

[Jessified]

Speaking of German beer, I'm a fan of the resealable Grolsch bottles. Which I thought was a German beer but Wikipedia tells me it's Dutch. At any rate, the bottles are perfect for homebrewing, and I imagine it makes it that much easier to reuse.

All around, I think beer is a pretty environmentally friendly product to consume, especially if you buy local. I feel guitly about buying a lot of things, but thankfully, beer is not one of them!

Re:glass is better

[Jessified]

Precisely, I really like that system. It's nice to meet some other beer enthusiaist. BFF = Beer Friends Forever

Re:glass is better

[Hyperhaplo]

All the beer I drink and produce goes into glass bottles.

Errr... please tell us that you don't personally "produce" your "beer"

Re:glass is better

[twidarkling]

The only problem is suitable sand for glass is technically a limited resource. While one or two companies could switch to glass nowadays, with the fact that most people throw out their bottles rather than return them, you'd eventually run out. Plant-based materials can be simply planted in more places, and even better if the intermediate product is useful for something else.

Re:glass is better

[bluemonq]

Of course it matters. There's a lot fewer soft drink bottlers which means that a given bottle has to travel a farther distance on average before it reaches its destination shelf. Also consider that soft drinks are sold in more locations (unlike the Japanese, last time I checked, in the United States we don't have unattended beer vending machines), meaning that they have to be distributed to more locations.

Re:glass is better

[Jessified]

I'm not sure it's as black and white as "of course." If you are talking about a city that already has a cola production and refilling facility, and they serve the surrounding area, it may be just as good or better to recycle glass bottles and refill them as it would be to continually manufacture a new biodegradable bottle for every sale (as they will presumably eventually degrade). If the alternative to the biodegradable bottle is to continually ship glass bottles across the continent and back, then yea, the answer is obvious.

I don't have the exact numbers right here in front of me. If you do, then by all means share.

Re:glass is better

[modecx]

Your favorite soft drink is also usually transported as a super-concentrated syrup via rail car, and it's probably bottled a lot closer to home than most people imagine. All of the distribution chains started out this way ever since sodas became so popular, and they still work that way. So, yeah... If we could get people in the habit of recycling their glass beverage containers, glass would work mighty well also.

Re:glass is better

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

MMMMmmmmm! GM corn bottles, carrying pesticide residue! Where do I get mine?

I drink maybe a soda, or two, a year. Now, the bottle may end up being as toxic as the stuff in it. I can live without. Just don't start shipping my RedBulls in the things..

Re:glass is better

[TheReaperD]

What's sad is we were used to doing this. Then the companies decided to switch to plastic to save money and damn the consumer (plastic tastes like crap compared to glass) and the environment. Now that it's fashionable for a company to be green, they come up with a plant based bottle that you still have to throw away. Better than what they are currently using but, it's still inferior to what they were doing in the past.

Re:glass is better

[clarkcox3]

Really? Except for water, Silicon dioxide is the most common compound on the planet. It's one of the least "limited" resources out there; the planet's made out of it..

Re:glass is better

[andre1s]

Well they are a distributor of vodka so they do use glass bottles

Re:glass is better

[Anonymous Coward]

"MMMMmmmmm! GM corn bottles, carrying pesticide residue! Where do I get mine?"

You get a nice glass bottle, washed with water containing pesticide residue AND arsenic.

Re:glass is better

[lawnboy5-O]

'bout time right?

Re:glass is better

[Neil Boekend]

In the Netherlands the brewers are all but required to have deposit on their bottles. I would guess 90% of the beer is in deposit bottles.
However there is an environmental downside to reusing bottles: you have to clean them. This is not a simple cleaning process, as there are assholes who store things like paint thinner in bottles and redeposit them afterwards. Cigarette buds are quite common. You have to get everything out that someone could put into it (except for paint and other opaque stuff: the optical detection can see that) because there is no sure way to detect all those toxins (a gasschromatograph would be to expensive and a "electronic nose" isn't good enough yet) so you have to use a heavy cleaning agent to be sure your beer still tastes the same.
Those cleaning agents are very bad for the environment. A degradable bottle that you could compost would be better. (recycling and cleaning is still better for the environment as normal throwaway bottles)

Re:glass is better

[Neil Boekend]

I produce some of my own beer. What's wrong with that?

Re:glass is better

[rainmouse]

I guess it's still the 1950's in Mexico, since they're still washing out and reusing glass bottles.

Must be 1950's in Scotland too. In Scotland most people drink Irn Bru instead of Coke which typically comes in glass bottles and you are refunded about a quarter of the price of the bottle if you return it to a shop. They pick them up each day wash them and re-use them. The glass bottles are also larger and cheaper than the plastic ones (before you even consider the shop refund).

Re:glass is better

[CRCulver]

Glass isn't made from just any random sand.

Re:glass is better

[mwvdlee]

That's why most countries that reuse bottles give the customers a small refund when returning the bottles.
If there are still some assholes throwing bottles away, they simply end up paying a little more, offsetting the cost of recycling glass from the trash.

Re:glass is better

[mwvdlee]

I understand you want American beer to taste less like piss, but mixing it with Corona is only going to get you so far.

Re:glass is better

[mwvdlee]

Not just Germany.
AFAIK, most European beers use just a few types of bottles, just with different labels.
I also remember buying some imported beer from Japan and Suriname which were bottled in the same type of bottles. I wouldn't be surprised if those US domestic beers used the same type of bottles too.

Re:glass is better

[thetoadwarrior]

I don't believe that. I suspect it's just poor countries who get more benefit recycling bottles rather than shipping lighter plastic bottles. For the rest of us, we generally throw stuff away when we shouldn't so there isn't much point to using glass bottles.

At least the corn based ones biodegrade quite quickly.

Re:glass is better

[thetoadwarrior]

Incorrect.

You still have to account for people who litter or simply refuse to recycle. Glass will be around for decades. Corn based plastic decomposes very quickly compared to the other options (anywhere from weeks to 3 mosts I believe)

Corn plastic is cleaner to produce than normal plastic and supposedly does not give off all the gas that normal plastic gives off onto foods.

Old people need to learn things have moed on form the 50's and for good reason.

Re:glass is better

[thetoadwarrior]

Corn plastic is clearner than normal plastic. Not that it should matter when you're happy enough to put shit like red bull in your body.

Re:glass is better

[PastaLover]

Actually plenty countries in (rich parts of) Europe use glass bottles. It depends on how good people are at recycling and, I suspect, how far you have to ship the bottles back and forth. Last I heard, they were still bickering over which option uses less fossil fuels though.

Re:glass is better

[MrHanky]

No, he's right. Your comment had one single point: condescension. American brands like Miller, Coors and Budweiser aren't any better than Corona. If you're going to look down on something, the least you could do is find a high place. All you've got is bigoted nationalism. Fuck you.

Re:glass is better

[osu-neko]

Glass isn't made from just any random sand.

True. It's just made from silica aka quartz sand, the most common type of sand found inland on continents, or on coasts except in the tropics. So, not any random sand, true. Just the most common and most abundant type.

Re:glass is better

[martinX]

It's a joke that can be taken in one of two similar, yet different, ways.
1. You make beer, but you produce urine.
2. The way you originally phrased it ("All the beer I drink and produce goes into glass bottles.") conjures up an image of you drinking a full bottle at the top and filling up an empty at about waist height. If you did do that, you'd probably be working for the XXXX Brewing company. That stuff tastes horrible.

Hyperhaplo's attempted joke at your expense would have worked better in front of a group of real people, accompanied by actions. Internet sux for this stuff.

Re:glass is better

[zwarte piet]

Detecting wich bottles are too dirty and not reusing those might be a way to cut down on the chemicals.

Re:glass is better

[TheRaven64]

Depends where the bottling plant is. I'd love to see them moved to supermarkets, so you just drive tankers full of drinks to the supermarkets and the bottles are filled there. Then, when they're used, they can be returned to the same place, washed, and reused. No energy used to make new bottles (most of the time), no raw materials consumed to produce new bottles. Some energy used in the washing, and some used in transporting the bottles between the supermarkets and homes, but not much. I don't really understand why companies like Tesco and Walmart haven't done this already - it would lower their supply chain costs, and usually they're very aggressive in that department.

Re:glass is better

[flyneye]

Meanwhile the rest of us get the benefits of drinking from estrogen rich plastic containers. Which explains why so many Americans have man boobs, hormone induced mental disease and Democrats hold office.

Re:glass is better

[mijelh]

More or less, but every country has a different standard size for beer bottles. 33cl in Spain, 50cl in Poland, 60cl in Italy, etc.

Re:glass is better

[peliot]

The reason to use glass for beer is that CO2 leaks through plastic faster than it leaks through glass. As a result, soda has a much shorter shelf life than beer (i.e. it goes flat faster), which is okay because it is consumed faster. The volume and shape of plastic soda bottles is also driven by the same leakage problem. The surface to volume ratio has to be kept low enough that it doesnt go flat. 2L bottles are big enough (low surface to volume) to have a decent shelf life; the smaller ones do not last as long. They're getting better, and I believe that some advances enabled the use of plastic in single serving containers (which used to only be cans for the same reason), but glass is still much better than plastic.
Beer has a higher per bottle price, so the cost of the glass is offset anyway, but beer that got flat on the shelf wouldn't be a good marketing move.

Re:glass is better

[Neil Boekend]

Therein lies a part of the problem. It's difficult to detect: Optical detection will not find translucent stuff (although it will detect cigarette buds. They use it already for that) and a gasschromatograph just isn't feasible (way to slow to use it to test each bottle). A good electronic nose isn't available, so they will have to assume the worst.
Don't get me wrong: I prefer cleaning over throwing them away, but it's not all unicorns and rainbows.

Re:glass is better

[xaxa]

At least the corn based ones biodegrade quite quickly.

A potential problem is if these bottles contaminate the recycling of normal bottles. Almost all plastic containers (not just bottles) that I use are recycled, either at home, at work, or in bins on the street.

(Most weeks I put out a box of plastic, a box of metal+glass+card+paper, a box of food waste (for compost), and a small bag of stuff I can't recycle -- plastic film or bags, used tissues, etc.)

Glass bottles aren't collected here, but in some countries (e.g. Germany) you pay a deposit and return the bottles to a store. They're washed and reused. (Glass is collected here, but it's crushed and used to make new glass, or to surface roads, or whatever.)

Re:glass is better

[Yamata no Orochi]

I drink maybe a soda, or two, a year. Now, the bottle may end up being as toxic as the stuff in it.

That's cool, I can respect someone that doesn't drink sodas because they're unhea--

Just don't start shipping my RedBulls in the things..

DERP.

Re:glass is better

[Anonymous Coward]

you just can't pull organic material out of the earth forever, and not put it back. field 1, your field) you eat all the food grown, and all organic waste material is made into ipads and soda bottles. your field will eventually be a bunch of dead soil. field 2, my field) I eat all the food grown, and all organic waste material, goes back into the ground, thus my soil will remain fertile, for all intents and purposes, forever. imagine if everyone switched to making plastic out of waste organic material? this is as dumb as making gas out of corn. oil is the perfect subtance to create fuel and plastic from. the problem we have is we use wayyy to much fuel and plastic. the united states consumes more barrels of oil per day then the rest of the world combined. the point is, less consumption ...not turning all our bio organic material into plastic, which then goes into a landfill. moron.

Re:glass is better

[vegiVamp]

Weeks to months ? So what's the shelf life of a bottle of Pepsi going to be, given that it's going to be wet all the time?

Saying "plant-based plastic" is like saying that regular plastic is "carbon-based". Technically correct, but like all marketingspeak utterly useless. Tell me about the decay conditions, time and by-products, and the manufacturing requirements and leftovers, then we'll talk.

Hell, for all we know they found a way to turn food leftovers into crude oil, and are making plastic out of that. Where did you think "regular" plastic came from, if not dead dinosaurs?

Re:glass is better

[silanea]

Here in Germany - or at least here in Bavaria - any beer worth drinking is sold exclusively in glass bottles.

Re:glass is better

[TooMuchToDo]

Actually, I was talking to a brewmaster at the Samuel Adams brewery two weeks ago (went on a tour), and he said cans are best because they shield the beer from the effects of sunlight (which are the biggest enemy of beer during transport/storage). Glass is used because people like glass bottles more than cans, hence why the glass bottles are as deep a brown as possible (to prevent as much sunlight from hitting the beer).

For soda though, I don't think it's going to matter much if light his the industrial cleaner (boric/phosphoric acid) used to flavor the drinks =)

Re:glass is better

[Jessified]

I'm a little confused about that. My understanding was that light is bad for the yeast. So in homebrewing operations you want to keep the brew in a dark area. Even after you bottle a homebrew, because the yeast is still working on carbonating the now sealed bottles. However, in most commercial operations the yeast is killed off before bottling and the bottles are pressurized with CO2 tanks. I'm wondering how come sunlight would be detrimental at that point.

Re:glass is better

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Water, Glucose. B-Vitamins. Non-essential Amino Acid with remarkable cardio-vascular benefits. Caffeine.

Not too rough, once or twice a week.

Re:glass is better

[TooMuchToDo]

I did some quick Googling (beer+can+vs+bottle), and this popped up. I agree that more research is needed, I was just providing something I was told.

http://www.grapesandgrainsnyc.com/2009/03/29/the-great-can-vs-bottle-debate/

I was fortunate to meet Dale Katechis, the founder of Oskar Blues brewery a few years ago at Brewtopia. There in the midst of all these breweries and their countless bottles was a table filled with cans. Huh? It seemed so strange. Yet for Dale, it was a subtle war cry; a shot across the stern of the micro beer community. Dale’s Pale Ale was not just a great beer, but also a new philosophy: the Can is King. Backed by the belief in “less air, less light”, Dale was upbeat, passionate and grounded in his renegade ways. And the beer? Unbelievable. Featuring caramel toffee notes highlighted by fresh hops and an intoxicatingly smooth balance, it is delicious, and was deemed the Top Colorado Brewed Beer by the Rocky Mtn News in November, as well as the NY Times pick as the Best Pale Ale in America in 2005.

So fast-forward a few years, and cans are now popping up everywhere in the craft beer world. Breweries like Butternuts in upstate New York, New Belgium in Ft Collins, Colorado, and most recently Sly Fox from Pennsylvania, to name a few, have begun canning. They’re on the band wagon, and are espousing the advantages of the can: better protection from light and air, easier storage and transport, as well as a quicker cooling time for your tailgate fiestasSo what does that mean for us, the beer drinkers?

Well, frankly, better beer. Be it canned or bottled, brewers are testing and reinventing the ways we package our prized beverages. Concerned with the freshness of their beer, every detail is being scrutinized (and argued over). But honestly, bottles aren’t going away. The only thing that’s really changing? You’re going to find some damn tasty microbrews in cans. So embrace them, my friends. Embrace them without shame. The can will serve you well.

Re:glass is better

[Anonymous Coward]

They wash them out now? Last time I was in Cuidad de Mexico, the street vendors wouldn't wash the bottles out. They'd just refill them and sell them to the next guy waiting in line.

Re:glass is better

[penguinchris]

Elsewhere in the world, bottles use a similar label system. Not sure if they're laser-etched, but they're relatively permanent.

I've spent a lot of time in Thailand, and order Coke fairly frequently at restaurants there (tastes much better than US Coke because of the real sugar) which comes in reused bottles. They must be reused hundreds of times - they're really beat up in many cases, and the labels survive fine. Of course originally the bottles didn't have labels, because it makes no sense unless the labels can last since the bottles are reused.

I do find it strange that typical beer you get in glass bottles in the US has paper labels, and that the bottles are smashed and recycled rather than reused. Seems like a lot of extra work.

Re:glass is better

[thetoadwarrior]

I'm not sure you can really count water since the caffeine will make you pee more and I doubt it'll replace what you lose.

How about glass

[ron_ivi]

A quite renewable resource; recycles well; doesn't make your drink smell like a chemical factory over time.

I hope after these biodegradable plastic-like-plant-chemicals (that'll probably leech into your soft drink when/if the bottle gets warm), they consider glass as a material for soft drink bottle containers.

Re:How about glass

[wampus]

Glass is heavy and fragile and bulky and I would bet uses more energy to produce and to recycle than PET. Nothing is going to leach that isn't already. PET is PET. It's the same chemical produced from a different feedstock.

Re:How about glass

[mallyn]

We don't want glass!!!!! If it's left broken on the road, it can easily cause flat tires on bicylces!!!!

Organic bottles such as these are better; there is less danger to bicycles!!

If I had my way, all glass bottles would be replaced; especially beer and wine bottles.

Whenever I get a flat on my bicycle, it's almost always caused by broken glass from bottles.

Folks; please; don't suggest going back to glass!!!!!

I don't want more flat tires!!!!

Re:How about glass

[xMrFishx]

Are you sure you're not popping your tyres on the exessive ammount of exclamation marks that are nearby? I hear they're quite sharp.

Re:How about glass

[Timmmm]

In Africa (Kenya and Uganda at least; I've not been elsewhere), all soft drinks are sold in glass bottles. They are also reused (i.e. you refill them with drink) rather than recycled. Although for some reason the only options are fanta and coke. Coke I can understand, but fanta? Never made any sense to me...

Re:How about glass

[rhook]

We don't want glass!!!!!

If it's left broken on the road, it can easily cause flat tires on bicylces!!!!

Organic bottles such as these are better; there is less danger to bicycles!!

If I had my way, all glass bottles would be replaced; especially beer and wine bottles.

Whenever I get a flat on my bicycle, it's almost always caused by broken glass from bottles.

Folks; please; don't suggest going back to glass!!!!!

I don't want more flat tires!!!!

Do you realize that all petroleum products are organic? The only reason that the switch was ever made from glass to plastic is because it saves the manufacturer money on shipping costs (reduced weight).

Re:How about glass

[kitsunewarlock]

Fanta is made by Coke. Coke is available in all these places. Hence, so is Fanta.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the idea. I'll start tossing all glass products on the bike paths by me. The people on them do not follow the traffic rules at all. The bike path has a stop sign, not the road. So the people do not stop for the stop sign and make the cars and truck driver slam on the brakes as to not hit them.

I did check with the local police. The bike path should be stopping and waiting for car/truck traffic to clear in order to cross. Both for people on bikes and runners/joggers.

Re:How about glass

[DreadPiratePizz]

Glass is heavy. Glass can break. Glass is more expensive.

Re:How about glass

[Timmmm]

Yeah but Coca Cola make quite a bit more than Coke and Fanta, so that doesn't really explain anything:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coca-Cola_brands

Re:How about glass

[Kozz]

In Africa (Kenya and Uganda at least; I've not been elsewhere), all soft drinks are sold in glass bottles. They are also reused (i.e. you refill them with drink) rather than recycled. Although for some reason the only options are fanta and coke. Coke I can understand, but fanta? Never made any sense to me...

Agreed. Seriously, the gods must be crazy.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we all know the solution to lawlessness by someone else is... more lawlessness by me!

And when cyclists who obey the law (yes, we exist, but we're not pulling in front of you, plus confirmation bias is a bitch, so you don't notice) see you chucking bottles in the bike path, we'll see it as a declaration of war by you cagers, and we'll lose the civility we all enjoy on the street.

Wait, there's already no civility on the street? 90+% of cagers hate all cyclists, and 90% of cyclists hate all cagers? Ok, in that case, we've all got nothing to lose but our bloody necks. Do carry on.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

All plastics have plasticizers in them to make them flexible. The plasticizers can leach-out into foodstuffs and drinks.

Re:How about glass

[wampus]

Possibly. But they'll be the same plasticizers that are in PET already. Different source of hydrocarbons, same plastic.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Beverly. Now there's a drink!

Re:How about glass

[hipp5]

A quite renewable resource; recycles well;

Glass isn't that great for recycling. IIRC from my National Geographic issue a few years ago, recycled glass only uses 5% less energy to make than new glass. Compare that to aluminum where the recycled product uses 95% less energy to produce than from virgin materials. If you're looking to have a highly-recyclable product then aluminum is the way to go. Where glass is good is when you're reusing, but that brings up a whole question of logistics. Glass also has the issue of shipping weight and broken bottles all over the place.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH, as a cyclist, I've been hit once and nearly hit twice in the past year by cars rolling through their stop sign when the road I was on had no stop signs (including for the bike lane, where applicable).

It pisses me off, yes, but I don't go about sabotaging their vehicles, much less every vehicle of another class on the road. Maybe you should grow up a bit -- you don't sound like you have any business piloting a lethal missile on public roadways.

Re:How about glass

[Reilaos]

Glass is heavy -- means higher transportation costs, higher damages to the envireonment thereof.
Glass is nonbiodegradeable -- Good recycling, bad for the more likely event that it just gets thrown away, or dumped on the side of the street

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had my way, all glass bottles would be replaced; especially beer and wine bottles.

I've noticed that beer in glass bottles tastes a lot better than in cans. Yes, the exact same beer. Even if it's poured out into a glass. I don't know why.. I haven't seen beer in plastic bottles yet.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

> Glass isn't that great for recycling.

Reuse is better than recycle. And glass is good for that. Pepsi and Coke know this from history.

Re:How about glass

[Solandri]

recycled glass only uses 5% less energy to make than new glass. Compare that to aluminum where the recycled product uses 95% less energy to produce than from virgin materials. If you're looking to have a highly-recyclable product then aluminum is the way to go.

That's the wrong stat to be looking at. Recycled aluminum uses much less energy than producing new aluminum because aluminum production requires huge amounts of energy. So aluminum may only require 5% of its creation energy to recycle, but that's 5% of a huge number. Glass' 95% to recycle is 95% of a small number.

You want to be comparing the raw amount of energy needed to recycle. How many joules for a glass bottle, how many joules for an aluminum can.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

we had them in the time before the 90's it was the 80s when they started this plastic bottles BS.

Re:How about glass

[LordLimecat]

That percentage doesnt mean much. How much energy does it take to recycle aluminum? How much energy does it take to recycle glass? If the former is more than the latter, the fact that its "only 5%" is irrelevant.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass is heavy.

Extra work out. Americans need it.

Glass can break.

Weed out the some of the idiots.

Glass is more expensive.

Keep people who shouldn't be drinking it anyways from consuming it.

Re:How about glass

[schnikies79]

Don't recycle it, wash and re-use it.

Re:How about glass

[Microlith]

Glass is nonbiodegradeable

Glass degrades by the same process as stone. It will, over time, be worn down. More importantly, it is chemically neutral in nature and not easily mistaken for food.

Whereas plastic just stays in the same form constantly and is mistaken for food, or left out in the ocean will break down into smaller and smaller pieces and be mistaken for plankton, killing the animals that try to eat it.

Re:How about glass

[dreamchaser]

Try avoiding broken glass. Glass is a LOT more environmentally friendly than plastic if reused, which it easily can be. The only reason plastic is prevalent today is it's cheaper. Fuck your damn bike if you can't bother to avoid road hazards.

Re:How about glass

[dreamchaser]

Your use of the term 'cager' immediately declares your bias. It renders your entire post worthless. As both a driver and a cyclist I find your attitude childish.

Re:How about glass

[skids]

Hah! The younguns won't get that joke -- they watched the other movie of the same name instead. It had no falling coke bottle scene IIRC.

Re:How about glass

[h4rr4r]

Beer should never be in anything but brown glass. If need be lets get you some better tires.

Re:How about glass

[h4rr4r]

Best one being Mezzo-Mix. I finally found some in the states, sucks to pay $2 for a 300ml can though.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

A quite renewable resource; recycles well

Glass is not renewable (or even "quite renewable"). It does recycle well, but not infinitely, it degrades as it is reprocessed many times. Old glass need to be mixed with newer glass, which is made from non-renewable resources. Glass is also quite heavy and have a high environmental cost of transport, both when transporting the filled bottles to the customers and when collecting bottles for recycling. It also take much energy to melt and reform, or is very labour intense and need many nasty chemicals to clean if the bottles are reused.

Not that PET recycling is without problems either (like pollution of recycled material). But it is lighter and you get much more environmental friendly transports.

Re:How about glass

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I hope after these biodegradable plastic-like-plant-chemicals (that'll probably leech into your soft drink when/if the bottle gets warm)...

Or leaches in when the soda just sits there being acidic at any temperature, or when it hits the inside wall with bubble cavitation shock waves once the pressure is released to drink it.

My hope is that the materials chosen don't set off anybody's allergies. (For instance: I'm allergic to corn. Do I need to switch soda brands or risk anaphylaxis?)

Re:How about glass

[Americium]

Don't forget that plant based materials are radioactive and will irradiate your drink to some degree. Oil is nice and old, so everything is dead, but all plants have fallout from the atomic bomb testing. It's also easy to test the effects of one material, now you have dozens are organic materials that can interact with each other as well as your body. I definitely agree with your glass idea, anything of quality is in a glass bottle, (beer, wine, alcohol, root beer and good sodas), and back when coke was made with sugar and therefore was of higher quality, it too was in a glass bottle.

And yes, I know the radiation from plants is probably less than just the K40 antimatter annihilations within your body, nevermind the radon and solar radiation.

Re:How about glass

[h4rr4r]

Are you really this dumb?
This is PET, it does not matter if they make it from dead dinos, corn, or your corpse it is not going to set off anyone's corn allergies since the FUCKING MOLECULE IS PET not some corn protein.

Read and be educated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate

Re:How about glass

[kramerd]

In parts of Africa, coke is not an everyday drink. It is very expensive (relatively), and used for special occasions or tourists. There is not enough of a market to sell 30 kinds of soft drinks, so they have 3 (maybe 4 in some places if they include dimpled sprite) choices; flavored fanta drinks, and regular coke (the one made with real sugar). All of these are easily distinguishable by color (beneficial for those who can't read, for example).

Coke started a campaign to make coke available anywhere in the world during WWII, sending coke overseas to US soldiers. Since then, they have expanded quite a bit.

Re:How about glass

[h4rr4r]

Coke is still made with sugar and comes in glass bottles. Any good grocery store pretty much on the face of the earth should have it. You may need to go to the ethnic section of the store, assuming you are in the USA or in Canada.

The radiation from plants is not a concern. If you think it is you had better stay away from any bananas.

Re:How about glass

[opinionbot]

I think the GP's point is that although the percentage isn't useful when deciding between glass and aluminium, it is useful when deciding whether to recycle the glass. If the saving is only 5%, then it may not be worthwhile to recycle glass once the additional work involved in collection is taken into account. Can't comment on whether this is the case or not though...

Re:How about glass

[ColdWetDog]

> Glass isn't that great for recycling.

Reuse is better than recycle. And glass is good for that. Pepsi and Coke know this from history.

At least in my tiny little remote village, we're crushing glass and using it in roadways. Seems to work out well although I do get an awful lot of flats.

Re:How about glass

[shutdown -p now]

Although for some reason the only options are fanta and coke.

This reminds me of the late USSR of my childhood, where those two were also the only options aside from local drinks (and were seen as something immensely cool).

Re:How about glass

[Americium]

Ha, I have NEVER seen it in a grocery store. They switched because of some sugar tax in the 50s. Then the tax was lifted but they didn't switch back to sugar in the US because customers preferred the taste. Over time the sugar import tax in the US increased, so now they won't switch because of the sugar tariff makes sugar expensive in the US. Why do you think every product, besides the new organic products, have high fructose corn syrup and never have sugar.

Re:How about glass

[h4rr4r]

Does not compute. That 5% savings might be a little or a lot. Also glass bottles need not be recycled to be reused. They can be washed, sanitized and refilled. Ask any home-brewer about this.

Re:How about glass

[h4rr4r]

Where the hell do you live?

I have bought it all over the USA and in Canada, it is imported from Mexico. The other nations I have lived in produced it that way locally. You can also get cane sugar coke during passover, but that will be in plastic bottles.

Re:How about glass

[Samantha Wright]

You're being the bad kind of pedant—the kind that insists on a specific definition of a word despite multiple meanings being in the dictionary. Furthermore, your beef is with the original article, not that comment. Pick your fights better.

Re:How about glass

[Americium]

East coast. That's my point, it's made locally, therefore in the USA it's not made with sugar. And in other countries sugar is cheap, because they don't tax it to death, and often they can grow it locally, so coke is made with it.

Re:How about glass

[h4rr4r]

From your earlier posts it appears you may live in NJ, if so I feel sorry for you. I can also tell you that in NYC you can surely get Mexican coke and even in your area you should be able to get sugar coke just before passover. If you are near Woodbridge, Freehold or Princeton, you can find it at the local Wegman's. I believe they also have several other stores in that state.

Re:How about glass

[hipp5]

That percentage doesnt mean much. How much energy does it take to recycle aluminum? How much energy does it take to recycle glass? If the former is more than the latter, the fact that its "only 5%" is irrelevant.

Very good point. I just did some quick Googling (apparently recycled glass requires only 66% of the energy as virgin glass - I was wrong on that one) and haven't been able to find a straight answer. That being said, I found a few recycling facts websites (who knows if they are reliable sources) such as this one that give numerical values for the energy saved by recycling (although you have to convert from light bulb usage for actual numbers). If these sources can be trusted it suggests that an aluminum can takes 2.1 kWh of energy to make from virgin materials, and 100 Wh to make from recycled materials. Glass requires 600 Wh from virgin materials, and 200 Wh from recycled materials. So I guess it would take about 15 recyclings before the aluminum was better. I'm not sure how transportation weights affect this though. It'd also be interesting to figure out how many times the average unit of aluminum is recycled compared to glass.

Re:How about glass

[h4rr4r]

The coke you want is made in Mexico. If you live on the east cost I am 100% sure you can find it in a nice big grocery store near buy. You can also get it for passover as I mentioned. Pepsi just did a release of the throwback editions, those were all sugar sweetened. Sugar is not that expensive in the USA, we just subsidize the hell out of corn and coke prefers profits to good drinks.

None of the countries I lived in ever produced sugar, Europe is quite a bit too cold for that.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed that beer in glass bottles tastes a lot better than in cans. Yes, the exact same beer. Even if it's poured out into a glass. I don't know why.. I haven't seen beer in plastic bottles yet.

The metal of the can tends to leech off into the beer, giving it a "metallic" taste. I've noticed that it is worse with some beers than others, and some beers (Genesee, Pabst Blue Ribbon) have this problem at varying levels. Sometimes these two taste decent and barely metallic, and other times the metallic taste is so strong it kills the beer. I figured originally that some cans made by different companies might be worse (cheaper) than others, but given that I've seen different batches of the same beer with varying metallic strengths, I wouldn't be surprised if at least part of the problem is how old the beer is (ie. when it was canned).

Ironically, some bland, pathetic excuses for "beer" (ie. Bud Light) tend to benefit from the light metallic taste; otherwise, they tend to be nothing more than fizzy water with a little alcohol.

Glass beer bottles never seem to leave odd tastes in the beer. I think the trend of major companies trying to switch over to aluminum bottles is disturbing--I buy glass bottles for a reason, for better tasting beer, and with aluminum bottles... you might as well just get a bigger pack of cans for the same effect (and more beers). Luckily, those brewers pushing these aluminum bottles put out mostly garbage anyway so they're easily avoided.

Somewhat off topic, I've drank pop for years and it doesn't seem to suffer near as much in aluminum can vs. plastic bottle, maybe it's because of all the sugar. I do sometimes notice a difference in bottles vs. cans though, bot nothing major, and it usually doesn't seem like a metallic taste like the kind that plagues beer. Just... different, somehow.

Re:How about glass

[mallyn]

Lets consider using tempered glass if we really want glass. At least with tempered glass, it breaks into chunks that are not sharp enough to puncture tires.

For you glass-beer folks, you should see nothing wrong with this.

Lets all lobby the beer/soda/wine folks to start using tempered glass.

Luv & Peace

Re:How about glass

[mallyn]

Sometimes I cannot avoid the broken glass because it takes up the entire width of the bicycle path or bicycle lane (the bicycle lane is sometimes only three or four feet wide)

In some cases, if I see it in time, I will get off the bike and walk it through a broken glass zone.

There are some parts of town (Portland, Oregon), where it's worse than others

In fact, perhaps I should collect the glass and start making art work out of it using my kiln; now if only it is done in more colors than green and brown.

Luv & Peace

Re:How about glass

[kiddygrinder]

i wouldn't let you keep you up at night, mass market brewers probably tried to sell cans pretty bloody hard when they first started making them, even if all the mass market breweries move to aluminium bottles it's cheaper and easier for smaller brewers to use glass ( i would assume ) and even then i can't see those who are actually producing beer for the taste rather than the marketability switching.

Re:How about glass

[Ungrounded Lightning]

This is PET, it does not matter if they make it from dead dinos, corn, or your corpse it is not going to set off anyone's corn allergies since the FUCKING MOLECULE IS PET not some corn protein.

The immune system is the most sensitive chemical detector currently known. It apparently takes only one molecule - binding to only two IgE molecules - to trigger a mast cell.

If they purify it REALLY well - far beyond Reagent Grade, to spectroscopic grade - then, yes, it's just PET and won't set off allergies.

If they purify it the way they purify glucose, fructose, and a host of other corn-derived chemicals that are used as ingredients in food products, it is to laugh.

Given that they don't purify food INGREDIENTS to levels that avoid creating anaphylactic shock, what level of purity do you think would be used by the chemical industry when making material for a food CONTAINER?

Re:How about glass

[Skidborg]

As another cyclist who does follow the traffic rules but doesn't have any mod points right now, I approve of this message.

Re:How about glass

[gilgoomesh]

No, not all plastics require plasticizers. Many, like PET, are inherently pretty soft.

You're thinking of PVC (which is a hard plastic) and the plasticizer BPA.

Don't get me wrong: there's often all kinds of impurities and manufacturing by-products in PET but it's not a plasticizer issue.

Re:How about glass

[phantomfive]

I believe the reason for the reused bottles in poor countries is because A) the labor costs to clean the bottles are lower (which matters in a country where people haggle over five cents USD) and B) because the people in those countries are more likely to bring the bottles back. If people recycle bottles in the US, it's usually because they want to be green, not because they want the five cents.

In America, the cost to pay someone to transport and clean the bottles is more per bottle.

Re:How about glass

[geminidomino]

90+% of cagers hate all cyclists, and 90% of cyclists hate all cagers

And we motorcyclists think your both a bunch of twats.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

So when you get off the bike cause of the broken glass, do you sweep it to the side so the next cyclist isn't inconvenienced? Yes, I know it can be a bit of a bother to "do the right thing", but if it is a route that you travel often you are actually helping yourself.

Re:How about glass

[Hognoxious]

None of the countries I lived in ever produced sugar, Europe is quite a bit too cold for that.

O Rly? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_beet#Culture

Re:How about glass

[Hognoxious]

Given that they don't purify food INGREDIENTS to levels that avoid creating anaphylactic shock, what level of purity do you think would be used by the chemical industry when making material for a food CONTAINER?

In which case the bottle would be the least of your worries.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass is heavy. Heavy and fragile. As someone who moves beer bottles around for a living (yeah, yeah, "news for nerds"...blahblahblah), I can tell you the difference between 24 glass 12oz bottles of liquid and 24 plastic 12oz bottles of liquid is significant (not that we get plastic, but aluminum cans...soooo much better).

Also, like I said, glass breaks pretty easily. We lose a bottle or 2 a day, everyday. That's not counting 1 or 2 bottles a week when people ship to us. It's not much, but it adds up over time. Also, when that bottle is a 22oz or a 1 liter bottle, it adds up quicker.

As a side note, we sell growlers of beer, where you buy a half-gallon container and we fill it up on tap. It's much more economical, though you pretty much have to drink that 64oz of beer in a night, no keeping in the fridge for a later date (we also sell 32oz, but that's for pussies!). The same idea has been used in England, where French wine used to be shipped over in green glass bottles, but it wasn't economical to ship back the empties/broken ones and no one in England used green glass for *anything* (any English wines used brown bottles). So they started importing the wines in their original casks and bottling them as soon as they reached the coast. Cut down on the shipping cost/environmental impact, plus it meant the glass could be recycled. Everyone was happy! Except the shippers, I suppose...

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

In Nicaragua, most places still use the glass bottles too. Pepsi and Coke, however, are pushing the plastic more as its more profit for them.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you another reason, the "think of the children" lot. They might have something to say when junior cuts his hands to shreds after having dropped the bottle after being permitted to play with the damn thing by the neglectful "parents".

Re:How about glass

[cduffy]

I first heard "cager" as a motorcyclist -- I've never heard it as a bicyclist.

Then again, I'm the kind of bicyclist who follows the laws to the letter (including the ones that let me take the lane when it's safer to do so) and shows up at state congress transportation committee meetings in a suit, not the kind who goes flaunting the rules in Critical Mass but can't be bothered to lobby to change them.

Re:How about glass

[gl4ss]

yes it does, because coke and fanta are the the most popular global brands on the lineup(sprite isn't as popular as it used to be). even in finland, so why not in africa. also though, we used to have glass bottles for everything. when I was a kid we bought coke and sprite in 1 liter bottles. drop a bag of them and you'll remember it for a loooooong time..

anyways, nowadays the big bottles are plastic and that's good. only 0.33l coke is in glass bottle and that rarely too, but otherwise it's plastic bottles. one time use bottles now but they recycle the plastic(they used to use multi-time usable thicker plastics). cleaning the glass bottles for use isn't free and the weight of the glass is considerable.

Re:How about glass

[Neil Boekend]

Get new outer tires. New anti-puncture tires can have a lot of glass before the kevlar anti-puncture layer is worn out. I remember a Dutch consumer TV program (I believe "Kassa") where they invited a couple of manufacturers that claimed their tire could not be punctured. They hammered thumbtacks into them (some they could not get fully in. Only in the rubber thread, not in the kevlar) placed them on a construction in glass and had a 150 kg (300 punds) guy ride on it for a couple of hours. No inner tires were damaged. If you buy a decent tire (about EUR 50 here) you can probably use it daily with an occasional bottle on the road (say: twice a day) for years. You will sooner wear the tread off from them.

Just don't put my beer in a plastic bottle.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved that film. And, the gods are crazy.

Re:How about glass

[mwvdlee]

I drive a car for long distances and a bike for short distances (weather permitting).
Does that make me hate myself 90% all of the time?
You know, you CAN drive a bicycle (or in fact, do whatever you want) without being a snob.

Re:How about glass

[rtb61]

After having checked out online grocery pricing it would seem that cans have the edge on bottle in $/litre in similar sized containers. Once you get to 2 litre sizes $/litre gives the win to bottles.

So when it comes to lolly water, cheapest are the big bottles but if you want you lolly water more consistently bubbly go with cans bought in bulk. When it comes to recycling crushed cans make a more efficient return trip to the manufactures.

Re:How about glass

[snero3]

But surely you can just despose on the bottle by throwing if off the end of the earth.

Re:How about glass

[PastaLover]

That sounds plausible. Though, since all those soft drinks are made with high fructose corn syrup, doesn't that make your point kind of irrelevant in this case?

Re:How about glass

[AvitarX]

Modern cans often have a lining in them that is (I believe) some type of plastic.

A micro brew in my area uses them, they are more expensive than pure aluminum cans, but less expensive than glass, which is not cheaper in small, but commercial quantities (according to a owners of another brewer I know).

It's Slyfox that uses the lined cans, they taste alright, but it still feels wrong somehow, the Guinness drought cans are pretty good too.

Re:How about glass

[AVryhof]

I buy imported Coke from the grocery store because it contains real sugar rather than HFCS, and it all comes in glass bottles.

Also, glass bottles can be quite durable. When I was home brewing beer, I fell down a flight of stairs to a concrete floor with two cases in my arms....bottles flew everywhere but not a one of them broke.

In my experience, the walls on the bottles of my home brew are thinner than the walls of the imported coke bottles, so I bet the coke bottles are more durable.

Oh, and we washed and reused our glass bottles. I'm sure coke does (or at least could) too.

Re:How about glass

[AVryhof]

You're allergic to corn and drink soda that contains Hight Fructose Corn Syrup...and you're worried about the bottle?

Re:How about glass

[L4t3r4lu5]

Look up the acronym SMIDSY. You are small, and drivers are looking for large objects on the road. It's not their fault, it's the majority of traffic and they become accustomed to it subconsciously. You need to make a concerted effort to look for objects which you don't expect to see, and many lazy drivers don't.

Help them by wearing high visibility clothing / reflective vests, and using lights even in the daytime.

Disclosure: Motorcyclist, wear a high vis vest and ride with lights on in the daytime, full-beam when not stationary.

Re:How about glass

[eples]

Glass is heavier, which means that when you SHIP the product you will use more fuel. When you sale that up to billions and billions of bottles it is significant.

Re:How about glass

[drinkypoo]

Coke I can understand, but fanta?

Coca-cola is like a nation. It has its own military forces in any nation where it is not prohibited by law. Fanta is a Coca-cola product. They find ways to get their product into countries where it is not wanted, hence ubiquity.

Re:How about glass

[GCPSoft]

In Uruguay, Coke is bottled in returnable plastic bottles too. That means they wash and refill plastic bottles just like with the glass made bottles. Shamefull.

Re:How about glass

[mdarksbane]

My father-in-law used to run a Coca-cola plant. They went away from glass bottles because of the automated process that fills them.

Glass bottles not only have to be collected from the stores (instead of getting a regular shipment from the plastic factory), they also tend to acquire chips and scratches. So they have to be inspected.

But sometimes those ships are hard to see, or just structurally weak without any visible sign, and they break when they go through the automatic filling/capping machine. And then you have to stop the production line to clean up all the broken glass, and make sure it didn't get into the rest of your process.

Essentially, recycling glass bottles is a *huge* headache and time and money sink for the bottlers. That's why they went to plastic more than anything.

Re:How about glass

[internettoughguy]

You're being the bad kind of pedant

He's not really being a bad pendant, he's just taking the piss out of a movement that amounts to modern day vitalism.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not really being a bad pendant, he's ...

You mean, he hangs around your neck a lot?

Re:How about glass

[gr8_phk]

The "diet" drink don't have HFC - that would be too many calories. They use chemical sweeteners instead! Yum...

Re:How about glass

[Toze]

Wait, wait; are you complaining that the bottle used to contain a drink made from corn syrup is insufficiently removed from its corn origins, for the purposes of food allergies? Sir, I think I see a flaw in your argument.

Re:How about glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Mezzo-mix is free at the Coke tasting stations at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta and at EPCOT in Orlando. The price for entry, though, can be a little steep.

Re:How about glass

[nomadic]

The problem with using glass in roadways is that in asphalt at least the glass tends to migrate to the sides of the road, at least in well-travelled roads.

Re:How about glass

[vegiVamp]

Mountain Dew is made by Pepsi. Pepsi is available in Belgium. Alas, Mountain Dew is not.

The Netherlands have it, though; but I very much prefer the US high-fructose corn syrup version. Shame my USAF supplier went home :-D

Re:How about glass

[treeves]

BPA (bisphenol -A) is not a plasticizer. It is the monomer from which polycarbonate is made.
That's why those polycarbonate water bottles contain BPA. Residual (unpolymerized) BPA.
Polycarbonate doesn't contain plasticizer. It's very rigid.
Phthalates (e.g. dioctyl phthatlate, DOP) are common plasticizers.

Re:How about glass

[Ungrounded Lightning]

You're allergic to corn and drink soda that contains Hight Fructose Corn Syrup...and you're worried about the bottle?

I'm allergic to corn and DON'T drink soda that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup. (I had to give up Jolt when they started putting HFCS into it - well before the students at Stanford discovered this.)

I normally drink soda sweetened with aspartame (a dipeptide synthesized from precursors which are adequately denatured or purified regardless of the source) or occasionally with sucrose (which is from cane or beets). And while caramel coloring is often made from corn sugars, whatever it is that sets me off is apparently denatured by the caramelization heating. (At least in the case of PepsiCo products.)

Re:How about glass

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Given that they don't purify food INGREDIENTS to levels that avoid creating anaphylactic shock, ...

In which case the bottle would be the least of your worries.

Which is why I only eat and drink things that are made solely of basic ingredients that DON'T have the allergen in question in them to START with. That way whether the purification steps are adequate to take it out are not an issue.

And, yes, I HAVE had trouble with companies that change the formulation and not the labeling, or are simply mislabeled. Jolt, for instance, added corn syrup while still advertising "real sugar ..." and I had to give it up some time before they were caught at it. The few bread products that don't have an on-label corn product are still sometimes a problem due to bakers using corn flour as an anti-stick agent. (Fortunately that's visible.) And so on.

And that's why I'm concerned about bottling soda in a corn-derived biodegradable (INTENDED to break down) container. The container ingredients will be off-label, while the soda - water and acid - will have been leaching any soluble contaminants out of it for months by the time it's opened. Oops!

Re:How about glass

[Amouth]

and they break when they go through the automatic filling/capping machine. And then you have to stop the production line to clean up all the broken glass, and make sure it didn't get into the rest of your process.

I've worked with fillers - if this is what they where doing then they where doing it wrong.. i've never seen a modern filler that wasn't designed to take damaged bottles/caps and not have it stop the process. yes they would have to clean it up when they took the filler/caper down for cleaning but then most also have traps for it.. i don't see a problem..

if that really was their problem then they had a poorly designed filler line

Re:How about glass

[Reilaos]

We aren't throwing rocks into landfills with nearly as much regularity.

We also have biodegradable plastics.

Re:How about glass

[mdarksbane]

I may be exaggerating or misunderstanding his stories. I definitely remember him saying that separating out the chipped bottles was a major time waster, though, regardless of what precise reason caused it. It was also twenty of thirty years ago, so the filler machinery may not have been quite as developed.

Re:How about glass

[Amouth]

i agree that filtering them is going to be a big issue - but that should be done long before the filler. and is going to he a lot more intensive than just using a blow molder.

Re:How about glass

[Hognoxious]

Which is why I only eat and drink things that are made solely of basic ingredients that DON'T have the allergen in question in them to START with.

But unless you personally take it from the ground to your plate you can't guarantee that.

Somewhere along the process a grinding machine could have been used for some other substance, it could have been put in a truck that previously contained it or whatever.

Ever seen labels that say "may contain traces of ..." or "produced in a facility where X Y Z are present"?

Disposal

[MrEricSir]

How do we dispose of them? Are they as recyclable as petroleum-based plastics?

Also, are they biodegradable?

Re:Disposal

[RapmasterT]

Same as before. Yes. No.

The plastic is the same as it always was, the source material is all that's different. This is better marketing through sounds/feels good science, not through environmentalism. Hell, these bottles are going to use an order of magnitude more energy and other resources to produce than the old fashioned kind, so...yay?

Re:Disposal

[inpher]

They are as recyclable as any other PET bottle because they are made from PET. Dispose of them like you normally do.

Re:Disposal

[TubeSteak]

Also, are they biodegradable?

Biodegradeable doesn't always mean what we think it means.
A lot of stuff we put in garbage dumps can remain perfectly preserved for a hundred years.
The question is not "is the bottle biodegradeable" but "will it biodegrade without sunlight or oxygen"

Re:Disposal

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they are able to be composted. The quote is in a bacteria rich environment they will compost/breakdown in about 4 years.

Re:Disposal

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Darn, and I was hoping that taking plastics out of the buyers' market for petroleum would reduce demand and lower prices. Why do so many green solutions seem to reduce efficiency and increase energy usage when the end-to-end cycle is considered?

Re:Disposal

[Max Littlemore]

Why do so many green solutions seem to reduce efficiency and increase energy usage when the end-to-end cycle is considered? --

Because the old way of doing things never measures the full end to end cost.

If you want to measure the full cost of production of a petroleum sourced PET bottle, you need to take into account the initial production of biomass and then at least a couple of hundred thousand years of high pressure cellaring. When you look at it like that, the green solutions look cheap,

Re:Disposal

[timeOday]

Why do so many green solutions seem to reduce efficiency and increase energy usage when the end-to-end cycle is considered?

Largely because of naysayers who distort facts as necessary to reach that conclusion, or simply assume it to be the case with or without any evidence, such as the post you replied to. ("Order of magnitude" does have an actual definition.)

Re:Disposal

[h4rr4r]

Because you are a moron. Really that is the answer.

This will reduce demand for petroleum as it will take more energy to make the bottles, but that energy is not coming from petroleum.

Also the previous products often did not consider the end to end cycles at all. Like coal as a good example dumps all its waste into the air or into toxic ponds which later leak. Yet, people complain about the dangerous and waste from nuclear power since the nuclear power plant is not allowed to just dump its garbage into the air.

Re:Disposal

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Largely because of naysayers who distort facts as necessary to reach that conclusion, or simply assume it to be the case with or without any evidence, such as the post you replied to. ("Order of magnitude" does have an actual definition.)

Yeah, I'm reflexively skeptical about extravagant energy-saving claims when I hear them, but I agree, the article you referenced reads more like a press release than a study from the beginning. It gets really clear when you get to this part:

In a study by CNW Marketing called "Dust to Dust", researchers discovered that the Prius costs and average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles (the expected lifespan of a hybrid). On the other hand the Hummer costs $1.95 per mile over an expected 300,000 miles.

Ok, some glaring red flags there: 1) "a study by CNW Marketing" (nuff said), and 2) expected Prius lifespan of 100k miles vs. 300k for a Hummer... really? Hummers come with a 5/100,000 powertrain warranty. Priuses come with a 5/60,000 powertrain and a 96/100k hybrid system warranty, so I can't imagine a plausible justification for that stat; it's evident that the hybrid system isn't the limiting factor, and the powertrain mileage delta only gives the Hummer 66% more miles, not 200%. So no argument from me... that's clearly a bullshit study.

Re:Disposal

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to measure the full cost of production of a petroleum sourced PET bottle, you need to take into account the initial production of biomass and then at least a couple of hundred thousand years of high pressure cellaring. When you look at it like that, the green solutions look cheap,

That is sunk cost. It should not factor into economic decision making.

Re:Disposal

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Because you are a moron. Really that is the answer. This will reduce demand for petroleum as it will take more energy to make the bottles, but that energy is not coming from petroleum.

I hope you're right (about the reduced demand, not about me being a moron). But these things are notoriously hard to predict; corn-based ethanol is a good example of a bad idea that a lot of people thought was good.

A large scale move towards bio-plastics could plausibly remove some of the manufacturing sector's demand from the petro market, but if it does indeed take more energy to produce (a claim I haven't investigated, so I'm not saying it does), then the total impact on petro prices is unclear. The market repercussions of increased energy demands aren't necessarily limited to the immediate supply source. A rise in energy demand could affect a rise electric prices, which in turn could push consumers away from electric cars, or add financial stress to electricity-driven transit systems, making driving more attractive to cost-conscious commuters.

Also the previous products often did not consider the end to end cycles at all. Like coal as a good example dumps all its waste into the air or into toxic ponds which later leak. Yet, people complain about the dangerous and waste from nuclear power since the nuclear power plant is not allowed to just dump its garbage into the air.

I'm all for including all elements in the cycle when comparing energy alternatives in terms of pollution, cost or efficiency.

Re:Disposal

[Max Littlemore]

Which is why economics is a flawed construct. Although these things are starting to get factored into insurance costs.

Re:Disposal

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

If you want to measure the full cost of production of a petroleum sourced PET bottle, you need to take into account the initial production of biomass and then at least a couple of hundred thousand years of high pressure cellaring.

We do account for that; the scarcity and non-renewability of the raw materials are pricing factors, just as the extraction and refining costs are. The impact isn't fixed, and it probably isn't linear either. It's probably asymptotic relative to the current demand, the remaining supply, and any increased production costs caused by needing to excavate less accessible supply sources as more convenient ones are exhausted.

Re:Disposal

[slapout]

That problem solves itself -- no one actually drinks Pepsi.

Re:Disposal

[Anonymous Coward]

because you are omitting the energy used to create the petroleum in the first place when you calculate energy cost. the carbon fixing life form had to grow first, then get buried and over LOTS of time get turned into oil. seems like this is skipping the "over time turn into oil" part.

also, this will reduce the amount of carbon taken from one of the best carbon sinks the world has evolved, oil. The costs of introducing otherwise sequestered carbon into our waste stream have yet to be determined.

Taking carbon out of the ground (oil, etc.) is a bad idea for the carbon cycle. Using plant material that captures carbon from the atmosphere and fixing it into bottles seems like a good idea. However, they probably fail to take into account the pollution produced in manufacture, just like they do with the prius and every other "green" thing. then again, making bottles out of oil isn't exactly clean either, so it's probably not as bad as it seems. and the tech will certainly get better over time.

Re:Disposal

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but are you including the energy required to drill and extract all the petroleum? Those offshore drilling rigs, the fracking of oil shale, the massive refineries and the energy associated with cleanup from all those?

I'll certainly give you that full end-to-end cycles must be considered, I just find that too often the people arguing for them are looking at the full cycle of one and avoiding some of the same support issues in the other (from both sides...fucking corn ethanol came along and ruined *everything*). We need some decent standards regarding what "full cycle" means, what is included and what isn't (if one requires 2x as many people, is that a bad thing for requiring more cars, or can the cars be dealt with by public transit and it's a good thing for providing viable employment? Which is worse: lots of tractors, or lots of helicopters to transport workers too/from oil platforms?)

Just a thought (or 5)...

Re:Disposal

[evilviper]

Because the old way of doing things never measures the full end to end cost.

Hence the term, non renewable. No need to waste your breath.

It's still perfectly valid to ask why we can't do "green" a lot cheaper.

My answer to that is: because "green" is defined as being considerably more expensive. Once a less destructive way of doing things comes close to being economical, it ceases to be "green" and just becomes "the way everyone does it".

A decade ago, "excessive package" was the environmentalist's bane. Now, everything has bare minimal packaging. Why? Because it ceased to just be"green" and became economical, even profitable after a short while.

When cheap plastic alternatives come along, they won't be "green" either, they'll just be the way plastic is made...

Re:Disposal

[kyle5t]

Sounds similar to PLA.

Re:Disposal

[lawnboy5-O]

They are infinitely recyclable and bio degradable, and already in use in some fashion; and improvements keep coming everyday - these materials are not any more difficult to produce and do not take more energy to create - let alone how easy they are to source...

http://gizmodo.com/#!5490624/ibm-develops-infinitely-recyclable-plant+based-plastic
It a major improvement over petroleum plastics -

Moreover - how about 'dem, plant based cleaners - way better than their petroleum counterparts - and I think the same FUD was thrown at them as well.

Re:Disposal

[wvmarle]

As someone active in the recycling trade, I'm worried about this development. I don't know what the final plastic is they're going to use though - technically you can make syn gas from all kinds of carbohydrates, and create all kinds of other carbohydrates out of that. But I don't think they'll go such a roundabout way.

Currently soda bottles are PET. Some mineral water bottles are PVC, and that's a big problem because they're hard to sort out, and have to be sorted out well pretty much perfectly. No more than 100-200 ppm of PVC is accepted in the end product. PET is easy to recycle, and as all bottles are PET, the material is easy to sort out of domestic waste. Which currently is done on a large scale worldwide. Many countries do not use PVC bottles at all, so there all those transparent bottles in the waste simply are PET which makes recycling really efficient and commercially viable. Bottles are one of the very few post consumer products (i.e. recovered from domestic waste) that can be recycled on a purely commercial basis.

Now if Pepsi starts to use a different plastic for their bottles, we're going to have a problem. Even if Pepsi's products account for only say 10% of the world bottle use, that's 10% contamination overall, and that's enough to kill the whole recycling of bottles as we know it. I'm not exaggerating here. PVC is easy to recognise as it turns white upon bending, which most other plastics don't do. Sorting out those other plastics may become a true headache.

Plastics are easy to recycle in general - Pepsi's new bottles may also be easy to recycle - but only so if the material is pure. Plastics, as a rule of thumb, do not mix. There are a few exceptions to this rule, sure, but still the final product value is always lower than if the plastics were separate.

Introducing a new plastic to make plastic bottles is a bad idea environmentally, even though that one plastic may have advantages. It's going to cause trouble in the recycling industry: costs go up, product quality down, may even cause a fall in recycling rates if it gets too hard to do commercially like it's done now.

Re:Disposal

[Anonymous Coward]

But, if we can get away from petrol for fuel then we already have a solution for getting away from it for plastics. This is a big deal IMO. Petrol is a limited resource so having alternatives for everything we use it for is key.

Re:Disposal

[jmorris42]

> Hell, these bottles are going to use an order of magnitude more energy and other resources to produce than the old fashioned kind, so...yay?

Exactly. But Pepsi (and Coke) sell flavored sugar water at around double the price of the store brands so have vast sums for marketing and obscene profits. They can afford to pay more for the bottles if it sells even a little better to the hipsters who already tend to be Pepsi drinkers. I'd bet they even write off the additional expense AS a marketing cost on their tax returns if they can possibly get away with it.

Re:Disposal

[psydeshow]

That problem solves itself -- no one actually drinks Pepsi.

But Mountain Dew--a Pepsi product--is greedily consumed by addicts worldwide.

Re:Disposal

[slapout]

So that's how they stay in business...

Re:Disposal

[Anonymous Coward]

...hipsters who already tend to be Pepsi drinkers.

WRONG!

Hipsters drink energy dranks, mountain dew, or jolt.

Re:Disposal

[clang_jangle]

Introducing a new plastic to make plastic bottles is a bad idea environmentally

Then it's a good thing that's not what they're doing. What they have done is make PET out of organic waste material, rather than petroleum.

PET == PET, get it?

Re:Disposal

[Max Littlemore]

Hence the term, non renewable. No need to waste your breath.

That's my point. Oil is renewable, it just takes a very long time to make it. How much would you charge if you had to grow the biomass, bury it and monitor it for ~100,000 years to make sure the conditions are right to make oil? If you did it at a price to make it competitive with naturally occurring oil, it would be a really crappy investment. But it would be potentially "green", assuming the location of the burial pit was appropriate.

When considered in those terms, green technologies look better because they take into account a more complete cycle, but when thought of in this way, they start looking really cheap. Hell, when when appropriate insurance costs are factored into green energy production versus coal or nuclear, solar/wind wins out every time.

Remember, economics is a human construct, not a science. We can change the rules if we want and it's more sensible to change them so they match the science.

Re:Disposal

[Anonymous Coward]

Try asking RareButSeriousSideEf / "Paul" who he works for. Take a look at his posts since he joined.

What about biodegradability / recyclability?

[gweilo8888]

The source of the original material is just one part of the equation. Just as important to anybody who cares about the environment is how efficiently the product can be recycled, and whether or not it biodegrades at a reasonable rate. The article mentions neither, and so I'll ask here. Is Pepsi's new bottle as good or better than existing plastics in this area, or are we improving in one area for either marketing and financial reasons, at the detriment of others that are equally important?

Re:What about biodegradability / recyclability?

[Neutral_Observer]

They aren't biodegradable, they are edible!

Re:What about biodegradability / recyclability?

[Anonymous Coward]

As you may already have found out from comments above: they're not particularly biodegradable, as they're made of PET.

And no, while Neutral_Observer says they were "edible", I'd say they're not even drinkable ...

Re:What about biodegradability / recyclability?

[gweilo8888]

Much appreciated. I missed the reference to PET in the article, and the other comments were submitted within seconds of mine, but I did see them after posting. Sounds like it's likely a marketing and/or financial decision, with little if any benefit for the environment, although I missed some other points myself. Namely, compared to petroleum-derived PET, how much more or less energy does this plant-derived PET take to make, how much more or less byproducts does it result in, and how useful or bad are those byproducts... Certainly, there's a huge amount we need to know to determine whether this move by Pepsi is good, bad, or indifferent -- probably far more than the average consumer would even understand. This puff piece from the NZ Herald tells us nothing, except that they'll run pretty much anything a marketing droid offers them a good spin on.

Re:What about biodegradability / recyclability?

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree. While I do think that it's great to create plastics from other resources than mineral oil alone, this here Pepsi marketing is nothing but Pepsi marketing. (Whether its nuclear fission, coal, oil, natural gas, bio fuel ... there's always the twist of "green" or "natural" in any marketing.)

But some chemical background on how efficient/energy costly their process is would be highly appreciated ...

Just one problem...

[RapmasterT]

Trading plastic bottles made from petroleum for plastic bottles made from FOOD isn't much of a win. The end product is the EXACT SAME PLASTIC that we're filling up landfills with right now, just made from food sources. Well done Pepsi...you missed the point entirely, but I'm confident you can still spin it into a positive to the organic/vegan/hippie crowd.

Re:Just one problem...

[gman003]

No, this is still a major improvement. Less oil usage is good. Less food waste in landfills is good. Less dependency on foreign oil is good, at least for the US's economy. Hell, just because of that, you get minor reductions in income, and thus political power, to a variety of less-than-wholesome Middle-East countries. Major? No. A step forward? Hells yes.

Besides, in case you hadn't noticed, plastic is recyclable. I've got an empty bottle of Mt. Dew sitting beside me - it's going into the recycle bin literally as soon as I finish typing this. No landfill usage at all.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Switch grass? Pine bark? Corn husks? I'm thinking no one ever comes to a second dinner at your house.

Re:Just one problem...

[Brett Buck]

No it isn't, stop being a putz. They solved *half* the total problem, which is a hell of a lot more than you did. Using food waste is a HUGE improvement over petroleum. And PET containers are imminently recyclable, and the entire idea is PRACTICAL and economically feasible, which puts it far ahead of the game from most foolishly impractical eco-nut ideas.

Re:Just one problem...

[retchdog]

could be helpful in the long run. since plastics account for ~5% of petroleum consumption, the market is driven by petroleum-as-fuel. once the market responds to that, there may be very little left for plastics. there are fuel alternatives in development, so it should be just as important to develop alternative feedstocks for plastic (something we're, at least, behind in, leaving aside whether it is even possible in all cases).

Re:Just one problem...

[Dachannien]

Less oil usage is good.

Is this true? The less oil that goes into plastics, the cheaper it becomes, and the longer it will take for economic pressures to force the world into a renewable electric-based regime. What's more, more of that oil will be refined and burned, rather than processed into plastics and buried.

Re:Just one problem...

[Duradin]

"foolishly impractical ... ideas."

This *is* /., where foolishly impractical will be on the desktop next year, for sure, this time.

Re:Just one problem...

[currently_awake]

The base resource the new bottles are made from is waste they previously paid to throw away, now it's useful and customers pay to take it away. That's a win. It also reduces the effects of higher oil prices, as they don't use it (as much) anymore.

Re:Just one problem...

[retchdog]

this is almost a jevons paradox.

still, plastic amounts to only 5% of petroleum usage (in US). once plastic has enough relative petroleum-share to really matter, we'll probably be well on our way to alternative fuels as well.

Re:Just one problem...

[Brett Buck]

Excellent example that proves my point!

Re:Just one problem...

[wampus]

Wouldn't it be great to make plastic after we run out of oil?

Re:Just one problem...

[The Grim Reefer2]

No, this is still a major improvement. Less oil usage is good. Less food waste in landfills is good. Less dependency on foreign oil is good, at least for the US's economy.

Are you sure about that? How much more energy is it going to take to make these? If it's more, then where is that energy coming from? Are the raw materials heavier to transport than the current ones? What waste by-products are produced in doing this? What can be done with those by-products?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. Before you make statements like you did, you may want to look into these, and many other questions first. The end result may be that they use even more petroleum products than the current containers. Or create toxic leftovers in the process.

Are you old enough to remember the styrofoam clam-shells McDonalds sandwiches were served in? Those were just "evil" according to environmentalists. Except they kept you food warmer and could be recycled into all kinds of things. But they were replaced by wax coated paper that could not be recycled. The environmentalists were happier with the paper that could go nowhere other than a landfill and the food is not only crappy, but gets cold even sooner.

Re:Just one problem...

[Artifakt]

Less oil use is good, but using organic sources means encouraging the cultivation of those plants instead of others. Plowing under a diverse ecosystem to plant many acres of nothing but switchgrass or trash paper pine is still a negative consequence. Using corn husks is good, but we already have reductions in corn being used for food so that more can be used as an Ethanol source, and the world needs food as well as less oil dependency. The full array of consequences is always going to be mixed at best. Ultimately, processes like this will have the best impact if they can use a wide variety of organic sources and so a manufacturer can offer to buy up something such as wild Kudzu to reduce or eliminate it from areas where it should never have spread, rather than make people deliberately cultivate the same Kudzu because a major industrial process is now dependent on it. Hopefully Pepsi can use this to target some plants that have been exported way outside of their normal ecosystems, and actually restore some diversity for native plants, rather than promoting more monocultures.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

of course you are assuming they they only will use food waste.

PepsiCo said it plans to test the product in 2012 in a few hundred thousand bottles. Once it is sure it can successfully produce the bottle at that scale, it will begin converting all its products over.

That could mean a switch of billions of bottles sold each year.

Can't wait for them to start growing the stuff they need and pushing out other crops which are.. gasp.. eaten.

Re:Just one problem...

[bloodhawk]

food in landfills breaks down farely rapidly, plastic does not. They are turning a biodegradable product into a non biodegradable product. While it is a step up from using oil, it is also a step backwards for landfills etc.

Re:Just one problem...

[Jumperalex]

See, I KNEW I was helping win the environmental battle by NOT recycling ANYTHING. The faster we run out of it the faster we can't pollute the environment with it. It all makes perfect sense now. Thank you for opening my eyes.

Re:Just one problem...

[mattack2]

Is it FOOD or is it food-waste? If it's stuff that would be thrown away otherwise (and not fed to animals perhaps), then I still think it would be 'less bad' than oil-based plastics.. and yes, I did see other responses already denying it would be good to use less oil for this purpose.

Re:Just one problem...

[Lost Dragon]

It's about saving Pepsi money. Pepsi-Co merged with Frito Lay. If they can use scrap like corn husks and potato peels (which they already make in abundance) to create plastic bottles then they can essentially supply themselves with their own building materials and eliminate or reduce the need to deal with oil suppliers.

Re:Just one problem...

[mattack2]

Are you old enough to remember the styrofoam clam-shells McDonalds sandwiches were served in? Those were just "evil" according to environmentalists. Except they kept you food warmer and could be recycled into all kinds of things.

[citation needed]

Styrofoam (which actually is AFAIK not technically what these were, and I don't mean brand-name-wise, but it's what people call that kind of foam) seems to be one of the HARDER things to recycle.. and food contaminated products (except for bottles & cans) seems to not be recyclable either.

While it's not foam, even pizza boxes for example can't be recycled because they're food contaminated.

(I've largely stopped buying TV dinners since I can't recycle the plastic trays.)

Re:Just one problem...

[skids]

Food? Dude. Go tell mom to stop serving you leftover "orange peels, oat hulls, and potato scraps" for dinner.

 

Re:Just one problem...

[h4rr4r]

HAHA, who fed you that line of crap?

Nothing in a modern landfill breaks down rapidly. You see for that to happen you need oxygen and low soil/media compaction. Guess what? Modern landfills are highly compacted and pretty much oxygen free.

What they are doing is preventing something from going into the landfill in the first place and converting it into a recyclable product.

Re:Just one problem...

[h4rr4r]

That stuff can be recycled in a manner of speaking, thermal depolymerization would be the method. This can take all of the above mentioned items and make useful hydrocarbons out of them. We just choose not to do this as it is cheaper to pump oil out of the ground.

Re:Just one problem...

[Master Moose]

The article was in the business section of the News Papers web site. Not the environmental or the technology. All as far as I can tell Pepsi has found a way to cut down on waste disposal (cost savings) and rely less on external suppliers with production. (cost savings).

Any environmental benefits (real, exagerated, imagined or ortherwise hyped) are nothing more than consequential and/or spin.

Re:Just one problem...

[Chryana]

Virtually nobody recycles styrofoam, which makes it pretty much the same is if it could not be recycled. The reason is that it takes a huge amount of space for its weight so it is expensive to carry. I agree that styrofoam keeps your food warmer, but it is not greener than wax paper.

Re:Just one problem...

[mattack2]

Would that be at _least_ break even? The wikipedia article shows *one* test plant running, that appears to only be profitable because of tax laws that specifically gave thermal depolymerization a diesel credit. The parent company has filed for Chapter 11.

Re:Just one problem...

[Bacon Bits]

The major improvement is two-fold:

1) Petroleum is non-renewable. Plant and food waste is renewable.

2) If a large corporation adopts such a product, they must have found a way to make it economically viable because corporations are fundamentally selfish. Thus, we have an economically viable, renewable, alternative resource to produce PET.

Petroleum is finite. It's going away. We will need to find alternatives to all the uses for which we've found for petroleum. Primarily that's fuel, lubricants, and plastics. Petroleum-based fuel is fundamentally flawed and so different alternatives are important to find, but both lubricants and plastics are still very necessary. Because petroleum is largely composed of decomposed plant material, it makes sense to produce the replacement resource from contemporary plant materials. We just need to find a way to economically produce simple hydrocarbons.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to popular myth, recycling plastic is a net loss and BAD for the environment. Generally speaking, if its not metal recling harms the environment and uses MORE energy.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasting arable land corn growing corn or other easily fuel-converted biomass is unwise in a world with over six billion people. And plastics are not as effectively recycled as glass. And plastic recycling creates its own problems, especially when the vendors ship the recycling material overseas to be processed in countries with far less stringent pollution laws than the USA.

In the USA, about 70% of petroleum is used for transportation, about 24% for plastics. If you want' to reduce that consumption enough to reduce the dependence on foreign oil, go after transportation first. For example, stop shipping expensive bottles of water everywhere.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

(I've largely stopped buying TV dinners since I can't recycle the plastic trays.)

I've large stopped getting them because i gained 30 pounds from them. Stopped eating them and the 30 pounds is gone. They are very high carb and high sodium (which helps with the weight gain).

Also it seems like a cost cutting move alone from Pepsis point of view. They have tons of waste that could be plastic. Instead of paying to have it hauled away. make it into other products and sell it. Pretty smart actually.

Re:Just one problem...

[Rary]

Besides, in case you hadn't noticed, plastic is recyclable.

Well, sort of. Plastic recycling is a bit of a scam.

The normal assumption is that if something is recyclable, that means it will live many "lives" as the same or a similar product. This is somewhat true for things like paper and glass, but generally not true for plastic. Most plastics can be recycled into a different plastic product, and that plastic product is not recyclable, meaning that it goes around once, and then ends up in a landfill.

Additionally, the demand for products made from recycled plastic is much lower than the supply of plastic to be recycled, so in truth, many of those bottles you put in your recycle bin will just get thrown in the garbage at the recycling plant.

The net effect of the prevalence of plastic recycling is likely greater harm to the environment, as people just assume that it's okay to use plastic since they can throw it into the recycle bin when they're done with it, so they end up using lots of plastic whereas the environment would be much better off if they were using other, more recyclable, materials.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's not foam, even pizza boxes for example can't be recycled because they're food contaminated.

This would be why you burn the stuff and use the heat for distributed district heating. The environmental impact is way lower than the fossil fuels people would otherwise burn in their boilers, especially when taking into consideration that a centralized unit can use much more advanced filters and scrubbers.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Food contaminated materials can be recycled just fine, they just can't be recycled for food use anymore. All food containers (or parts that have food contact) must be virgin material.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's not foam, even pizza boxes for example can't be recycled because they're food contaminated.

No, but most of them can be composted. In the suburbs, you can do this in your backyard, here in the middle of New York City, it's actually (often) more economically viable to send it to a commercial composter than to put it in the trash (where I work, trash costs something like 2x as much as composting by pound, and we actually get paid a small amount for recycling by the pound).

Re:Just one problem...

[rodch]

Are you sure about that? How much more energy is it going to take to make these? If it's more, then where is that energy coming from? Are the raw materials heavier to transport than the current ones? What waste by-products are produced in doing this? What can be done with those by-products?

I would like to see authoritative comment on the overall origin-to-disposal/degradation atmospheric carbon budget of biomass-based vs petroleum-based PET. The energy budget is related, but mainly as it affects atmospheric CO2.

Superficially, the burial of biomass-based non-biodegradable plastic looks rather like atmospheric carbon capture and sequestration. An environmental plus. Biodegradability is a two-edged sword. It removes junk from the environment at the expense of releasing carbon to the atmosphere.

Parent is right, you need ALL of the figures before making a judgment. Maybe I missed a trick.

Re:Just one problem...

[wvmarle]

Recycling of EPS (expandable polystyrene; styrofoam) is technically not harder or easier than most other plastics. It's just polystyrene.

The problem specific for this material is volume versus weight. You can have huge truck full of it, and only carry about two tonnes. That's the problem. It needs compacting before transport, which is fine when you're a factory that produces EPS because you have a lot of waste, and the waste is clean. Then you would buy a compactor, sell out the compacted bricks to recyclers, and the machine pays for itself in no time.

From domestic the problem is again volume, and contamination. It's darn hard to wash this stuff, as it floats on top of the water. Virtually nothing of it becomes submerged. Even light plastics like PE will float at the surface, but almost completely submerged so washing is still OK.

Re:Just one problem...

[wvmarle]

You may be right for domestic waste, not for industrial. EPS is a common material in the recycling market. I'm dealing with it regularly. Volume can be reduced easily with a compressor. The real issue is cleaning it, it's almost impossible to wash due to the light weight. That's why food contaminated EPS is not recycled.

Re:Just one problem...

[pokyo]

I'm not sure on the policy of where you live, but where I live recyclables like plastic bottles are currently being buried because there is no demand for them. These materials are sold to manufactures so that they can reuse the materials. If there are no buyers than the items are stockpiled. If there is no room in the stockpile than the recyclables are buried.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you should be at least able to compost the food contaminated paper.

Re:Just one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tip: If you rinse/wash the plastic, it is indeed recyclable. I tend to put the few pieces of recyclable plastic I produce (I avoid buying it when possible) into the dish washer (or sink if I'm hand-washing) with the regular dishes. Comes out clean and goes right into the blue bin. The unfortunate thing for me is that I've recently moved to a new city where glass is only recyclable if I personally drop it off (and even then, they only take refundables). I now buy plastics when I have a choice between glass and plastic. It's a pity there's no compost program here either. I've more than doubled my garbage output as the majority of my waste is organics. I'm considering asking my landlord if I can start a compost heap on the property this spring.

Re:Just one problem...

[adisakp]

I've largely stopped buying TV dinners since I can't recycle the plastic trays.

The plastic trays in most food products I buy have a recycle symbol on them and it's quite easy to clean and rinse the tray yourself before placing it in the recycling bin and then it it perfectly recyclable. The problem is that if you put in a dirty tray with food all over it, it causes contamination that requires that the whole recycling bin is thrown into the garbage.

From my link: Contamination occurs when a recyclable item is made non-recyclable and can happen in several ways: Food waste – wash containers. When a plastic tray from prepackaged meals/TV dinner is placed in the recycle cart with food still on it contamination happens. The entire recycling cart is contaminated and all items go in the trash. Rinsing/washing recyclables keeps items recyclable, plus it keeps your recycle cart tidy.

Re:Just one problem...

[mattack2]

What I mean is that, even though they have a #1 symbol on them, local recyclers (places you take recycling to *and* the recycling that comes to one's home -- I realize that sometimes those are one and the same) specifically say "no black plastic", and virtually all TV dinner trays are black plastic.

Plus, "clean and rinse the tray". How much cleaning? That obviously adds more energy (mine and "total energy"-wise) into the whole problem. As clean as you'd wash a dish to eat off of again?

This will work great

[dmomo]

Until they find out that this wonderfully Wonka-worthy craze-tastic compostable compound is biodegradable in anything... including soda pop!

Re:This will work great

[rubycodez]

or they find out bacteria find the containers tasty and that raises leaking issues at the best and food poisoning fatalities at the worst.

Re:This will work great

[blueg3]

The chemical the bottles are made out of is PET. I think they have some experience with the characteristics of PET.

babys can digest crude oil, fish digest plastic

[Anonymous Coward]

most of us, can do neither. biodispersable?

Sunchips

[Anonymous Coward]

They moved away from foil/plastic to a bag that would decompose quickly... not sure what it was made of.

I liked Sunchips, but the bag was so terrible I stopped buying them. Fortunately, they've switched back to having the original bag, with a crappy bag as an option for those people who can put up with the terrible, terrible quality of the eco-friendly bag.

The moral, I guess, is that going green is fine if your product is as good as the non-green alternative. You can only convince a small fraction of the world to buy an inferior product out of guilt or smugness.

Re:Sunchips

[skids]

You were one of the ingrown toenails that scuttled the new bag by whining that it made too much noise? No wonder you have to post AC.

Happily, they still produce a portion of their original flavor in the new bags. Unhappily, I like the cheddar flavor better.

Re:Sunchips

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Sunchips, too, but the chips are so terrible I stopped buying them. Fortunately, there are other chips that can legally be called 'chips' because they aren't Frankstein-esque mixture of ingredients.

Re:Sunchips

[vegiVamp]

Out of sheer curiosity, what was wrong with the new bag ?

Will they be tossed everywhere now?

[12AU7A]

Now that the bottles are fully biodegradable, will people have no guilt about tossing them everywhere knowing they will biodegrade? Sounds like it will just generate more litter.

Re:Will they be tossed everywhere now?

[proverbialcow]

Biodegradable since when? They're just weaning themselves off petroleum; the end product is exactly the same.

Re:Will they be tossed everywhere now?

[Gadget_Guy]

The kind of person who litters is hardly likely to look at closely at the composition of the packaging before tossing it over their shoulder. Littering is an act of thoughtlessness, not a carefully considered risk management assessment.

I saw this same argument when they introduced biodegradable plastic bags at supermarkets in my area. The streets were going to be awash with bags. Guess what? It made no difference at all.

Ah great

[countertrolling]

Let's put the salmonella and e coli into the bottle itself.

Re:Ah great

[larry bagina]

salmonella, pepsi, same effect.

Not sure I like the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What about using GLASS like in the past? Glass is a much better product to recycle and will not "leak" chemicals into the drink like plastics (organic or petroleum based) do.

One tiny little flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a big deal, but in order to get all these agricultural by-products in the quantities needed to be able to use scraps to make bottles, you kind of need a solid oil-based infrastructure for growing, harvesting and transporting all that food in the first place.

But hey, no worries, the pressing issue of bottling carbonated sugar water has been solved! Carry on! Carry on!

Re:One tiny little flaw

[wampus]

And? Instead of letting the agricultural byproducts go to waste or composting them or whatever, they are recycling them as packaging that they were going to use oil for. Now that oil can stay safely tucked away under the sand... or get burned by a bitchin Camero.

Re:One tiny little flaw

[VirginMary]

Yes, you're a genius! Because why would we want to solve one problem if there are still other problems left? If we can replace some plastics that were previously produced from fossil fuels with those produced from food waste that's obviously wrong if we're still left with other areas where we're *currently* relying on fossil fuels. Wow! I can only marvel at your intelligence! It's obviously either all or nothing. Maybe you should kill yourself because you're so smart you're making the rest of us feel stupid. Or, more likely, you're just trolling. In that case, good job!

Re:One tiny little flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you seriously not understand the point? The point is that without oil THERE WON'T BE ANY EXTRA FOOD TO MAKE SCRAPS TO MAKE BOTTLES. Jesus. Christ.

The worst part is your sig "When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion". You have the delusion that the way world is now can continue without oil! My God!

Re:One tiny little flaw

[skids]

The over-dependence of our agricultural sector on fossil fuel products is an entirely separate problem. If anything, this bottle will give us more time to address that problem, by freeing up oil to make fertilizer with.

Terra preta. Google it.

Its as disposable as PET?

[perpenso]

How do we dispose of them? Are they as recyclable as petroleum-based plastics? Also, are they biodegradable?

According to the article: "Pepsi says it is the world's first bottle of a common type of plastic called PET made entirely of plant materials." PET, Polyethylene terephthalate, made from petroleum or from food waste is still the same molecule. It should perform the same regardless of what it is made from.

That was some goood corn!

[mug funky]

hmm... i wonder when North American corn production will improve to the point where we can ACTUALLY EAT IT?

not being an oil industry fanboy or anything, but using potentially viable food to package sugarwater seems a little... myopic.

Re:That was some goood corn!

[wampus]

The article specifically says they use corn husks. Do you eat the husk?

Re:That was some goood corn!

[MoonBuggy]

Why? It's not like there's a lack of food worldwide, there's just a vast amount of corruption in the supply chain preventing it from reaching some places where it's needed.

Re:That was some goood corn!

[ekgringo]

The tamale industry will be devastated.

Re:That was some goood corn!

[wampus]

Nah, no worries. They've developed a petrochemical-derived replacement tamale wrapper that should be on the market in a few months.

Re:That was some goood corn!

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm... i wonder when North American corn production will improve to the point where we can ACTUALLY EAT IT?

not being an oil industry fanboy or anything, but using potentially viable food to package sugarwater seems a little... myopic.

okay Tasteless

Re:That was some goood corn!

[Anonymous Coward]

using potentially viable food to package sugarwater

I'm not sure pine bark and corn husks count as 'potentially viable food'...

Re:That was some goood corn!

[Anonymous Coward]

They plan to use corn HUSKS. As in the junk around the actual corn that you don't eat!

made entirely of plant material

[flaming error]

Sounds like the bottle is more suitable for human consumption than its contents.

Re:made entirely of plant material

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sounds like the bottle is more suitable for human consumption than its contents."
How is this funny with score 4? its nutritiously true.

MAKE EM OUT OF WEED

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever made environmentally safe bottles... ON WEED?

Thank Dr. Sherry Rogers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sherry Rogers was one of the first researchers to publish the effects of chemicals from plastics leaching into food and drinks. I was reading about this about 15 years ago in some of her publications. Another thing she helped shoot down was premarin, a woman's hormone which was eventually shown to cause cancer. I'm a little prejudiced since she figured out I was full of heavy metal and thereby saved my life, but that's just me. Just google her, she's a good read.

Re:Thank Dr. Sherry Rogers

[wampus]

Does she pay you to search for "plastic" and related terms and then sing her praises?

Re:Thank Dr. Sherry Rogers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, don't read anything by a researcher dedicated to wiping degenerative disease from the face of the planet. And has published 13 books on the subject. And has published a newsletter on the subject for, lets see, I'm not sure but about 20 years. And until retiring a couple years ago was in good standing with the AMA as a practitioner, researcher and educator.

If you are reeeeeely a tightwad, chances are her books are at your local library, they are here.

I regularly read published articles about some health problem, say Alzheimer's, and the conclusion usually made is there is no known cause or cure. Weeeell that's not entirely true. All degenerative disease has its cause in two things: Chemical damage to cells and the presence of heavy metals in the cell. Either one prevents the cell from functioning normally.

Introducing the notion of mineral dependent enzymes leads you, the reader, to just why this could be. Lets take an enzyme, composed of cells, many of whom use, say zinc, to function normally. If a heavy metal gets into the cell, it displaces any zinc molecule trying to get into the cell. Once this happens the cell can't function because it doesn't use, say lead, it uses only zinc. So that cell no longer functions. If a whole bunch of cells in the enzyme are full of heavy metals then the enzyme's proper function is in question.

What does an enzyme do? All kinds of things. One function is to enable changes to DNA. An enzyme mozies up to a DNA strand, breaks the lattice and proceeds to make what it thinks are necessary changes to the DNA code. However if the enzyme is messed up from being full of lead it won't do what is expected. It may not make it to the DNA strand at all, just sit there and shrivel up. It may try to modify the DNA but screws up the new encoding causing..... you guessed it.... genetic damage. This type of damage happens to nerve cells, among others, which if of a great enough extent in a person elicits all kinds of symptoms of degenerative disease.

Chemicals damage the outside of cells and prevent their proper function in a similar fashion, hence no more plastic bottles at Pepsi Co. Damn, the really absolutely mind boggling thing about this is that PEPSI CO. gets it. And did something about it . I am absolutely floored. Blown away.

If you are thinking ahead then other possibilities become evident. Why are all these athletes dropping dead of heart failure? Likely they ran out of magnesium from loss in sweat from training. You sweat out minerals and need to supplement beyond what you get from the nutritional content of your food. Easily done with a $300 red blood cell mineral assay from any respected national medical lab to see if you are low. Low magnesium is very common and is a major contributor to heart disease, regardless of age, but with increasing likely hood as a person grows older.

Well, now you know some of what I know and you didn't even have to get your big lard butt out of your chair to find out how not to die an early unglamorous death.

Re:Thank Dr. Sherry Rogers

[wampus]

I'm not hearing a no.

Re:Thank Dr. Sherry Rogers

[Skidborg]

Honestly though, you wouldn't believe a "no" anyway.

auto, aluminum, other plants being disassembled

[Anonymous Coward]

could make titanium bottles. light. bullet proof. we smelt worse stuff?

Re:auto, aluminum, other plants being disassembled

[Anonymous Coward]

We could do worse, so we should do worse!
Titanium cans of the same dimensions will still not be very strong and cost a shitload more.

Hmm...

[tool462]

Corn syrup on the inside, corn husks on the outside.

Might as well skip the middle man and just go pick some corn at the nearest farm.

Early Man Made Containers Of Clay!

[littlewink]

Now that's biodegradable!

I want my clay Pepsi!

Re:Early Man Made Containers Of Clay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually many roadside tea stalls in India, and even some trains and train stations, provide tea in clay containers. One train minister (railway is a government affair in India) even made a hard push for it a few years ago. However, that somehow got shot down in a couple of years.
Seems like a more environmentally friendly option than the cheap plastic or foam cups they have, which hardly ever get recycled in India.

oil is plants too

[scantics]

Strictly speaking, you could count phytoplankton as a plant and since that's what most of our oil is made from, they were already making their bottles out of plants!

I'll get this out of the way

[davidbrit2]

Advocates say the change could substantially improve the flavor of PepsiCo soft drinks.

PET bottles?

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Japan has been using these for years. In fact, while we usually call our bottles "24 oz. bottles", they call their standard 500 ml bottles "PET bottles" (of course due to the fact that they're made of PET plastic). From what I understand (little), they're also 100% recyclable like aluminum.

Styrofoam easy to recycle? You're ignorant.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Are you old enough to remember the styrofoam clam-shells McDonalds sandwiches were served in? Those were just "evil" according to environmentalists. Except they kept you food warmer and could be recycled into all kinds of things.

Polystyrene foams are very expensive to recycle and at least at the time of the McDonald's phase out were manufactured using CFCs, contributing to Ozone depletion.

Reading you're post, I'd say that you're not old enough to remember when styrofoam was in widespread use (or that you're a fucking idiot, or both.)

Re:Styrofoam easy to recycle? You're ignorant.

[The Grim Reefer2]

Polystyrene foams are very expensive to recycle and at least at the time of the McDonald's phase out were manufactured using CFCs, contributing to Ozone depletion.

A new process was implemented that didn't use CFC's for the manufacturing of the clam-shells prior to McDonalds discontinuing their use. However this still wasn't good enough for the Environmental Defense Fund. I know there was at least one company that used the clam shells to make park benches at profit until they were discontinued. So obviously someone found a way to make it economical.

Reading you're post, I'd say that you're not old enough to remember when styrofoam was in widespread use (or that you're a fucking idiot, or both.)

Yeah, you're so smart. I remember when they used paper originally before styrofoam. Because there were complaints that they were killing trees, they switched to the clam shells. Then that was no good, so it was back to paper, and everyone was happy. I say with you manners it's fortunate you stay in your mother basement.

Re:Styrofoam easy to recycle? You're ignorant.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

A new process was implemented that didn't use CFC's for the manufacturing of the clam-shells prior to McDonalds discontinuing their use

Cite or your full o' shite.

I know there was at least one company that used the clam shells to make park benches at profit until they were discontinued.

Cite or your full o' shite.

Re:Styrofoam easy to recycle? You're ignorant.

[The Grim Reefer2]

A new process was implemented that didn't use CFC's for the manufacturing of the clam-shells prior to McDonalds discontinuing their use

Cite or your full o' shite.

I know there was at least one company that used the clam shells to make park benches at profit until they were discontinued.

Cite or your full o' shite.

I'm not writing a paper, I'm commenting on Slashdot. Obviously you are either such a lazy ass or are too stupid to use Google to educate yourself. So here's the first link Google found about the non-CFC thing: http://www.citeman.com/5078-mcdonald%E2%80%99s-greening-the-golden-arches/

Re:Styrofoam easy to recycle? You're ignorant.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

From your own link:

The paper packaging used to replace the clamshell is not recyclable but it is nonetheless better for the environment and was expected to reduce the volume of waste by 90 percent

Idiot.

You know something is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

When the packaging has more nutritional value then its contents.

Fountain drinks are better

[failedlogic]

We shouldn't even be using bottles and cans for soft drinks. A fountain drink machine that dispenses the soda into paper cups would be a better solution.That is, the convenient places to get a soft drink like a pizza shop or convenience store have the space to just as easily install a fountain drink/ice dispenser for the drinks then they do the refrigerators for the drinks. Environment advantage would go to the fountain drink machine. Bottles and cans is purely a marketing decision to take up shelf space. There are also make your pop at home kits/machines too.

One of the culprits are grocery stores where there will always sell pop. The high margins, takes shelf space which people must browse and they probably get money from manufacturer for placement.

I'm trying to kick my habit of drinking pop. That would be the best option environmentally and for my health too.

Just bring back Crystal Pepsi.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, they could bottle it in radioactive lead bottles that are filled with syringes, I'd still drink the stuff.

It was AWESOME.

They can keep Josta in the store room though.

No plastic? Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, get rid of the HFCS for real sugar and I'm back on board.

Re:No plastic? Good!

[h4rr4r]

They already did that. They call it the throwback edition. As of March 11th they are a permanent part of the product line. They had sold them as limited releases before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throwback_(drink)

They stole this idea from me.

[SETIGuy]

Except I suggested they make their plants out of used bottles.

Hope it works out better

[p51d007]

than the "enviro" bags that Sun Chips had. I'm with the rest...glass is better, but in our 24/7 disposable world, no one wanted them. I guess if that was the only alternative, people would use them, but, they would have to be with screw on caps.

Crops

[Dzimas]

Five hundred years from now, archeologists are going to dig through the remnants of our civilization and try to figure out why we started planting millions of acres of switch grass and pine trees instead of proper food.

Re:Crops

[Chowderbags]

Really? Humans have planted non-food crops for thousands of years. Flax has been planted to make linens since at least Ancient Egypt, not to mention the long history of cotton, hemp, jute, etc. Even if no written records survive, I'm sure they can figure out what was going on.

Re:Crops

[Anonymous Coward]

and seeing the sudden increase of switch grass and pine tree production they're gonna assume some kind of human devolution that resulted in basic things like containers, chairs, spoons, etc simply disappearing from the face of the earth. it'll be pin-pointed to some kind of human catastrophe that resulted in an inability to produce the long lasting products they were able to produce so abundantly several decades prior.

Re:Crops

[Anonymous Coward]

The abundance of organically inert plastic particles in the environment will be the key to unlocking that "mystery".

Re:Crops

[mdielmann]

Interesting point. In North America, a house that is 100 years old is considered terribly old, and is devalued. In Europe and other parts of the world, houses and other large structures that are still in use were built centuries before. Why would you want to build a dwelling out of something that wouldn't last for centuries? Is there some indication that there will be fewer people in the future? Another great example is appliances. There's no reason a stove shouldn't last for 20 years - there are almost no moving parts and the elements are replaceable.

Then there are other things. If a CPU continues to function for 20 years, that might be too long. Not because it removes a sale, but because by that point you could buy something ridiculously more capable for a reasonable amount of money. OTOH, in certain situations, an expected lifespan of 20 years is mandated. Voyager comes to mind.

I really do think planned obsolescence is one of the evils of this world, and is primarily fueled by greed. Make things to last, and so they can be recycled when they fail, and the world will have smaller trash heaps.

Re:Crops

[Lunzo]

I think they'd be scratching their heads at the fact we built PET bottles that last for thousands of years and threw them away after one use. Why did we bury all these perfectly good bottles?

Re:Just a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

How can this be an improvement? In the natural world, plant material like orange peels, switch grass, etc. degrades in the fields and helps provide the nutrients for the next cycle of life. In Pepsi's scenario, all this bio-available organic material converted to PET, which is no longer part of the natural system at all...

The world currently manufacturers all the plastic it requires AND MORE. We *need* to is reduce dependence on plastics and REQUIRE it's recovery, ALL OF IT. Otherwise plastics will continue to degrade in size and nano-toxicity will plague us for generations.

1) REDUCE
2) ReUse
3) recycle

Oh, and by the way... how minor does a dependency problem have to be before it is no longer considered an addiction? Additionally, what difference does the origin of a pollutant make regarding its toxicity or desirablility?

No change of materials, really.

[carpefishus]

Current plastic bottles are made from oil. Did you really think that oil made from dinosaurs? Oil is made from plants.

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad they're still selling shitty health in a bottle. While this new material is a great step, the real problem is America's garbage eating habits.

In thailand

[voss]

They use plastic baggies filled with ice and pour the coke from the bottle right into it.
That way they can get the deposit right back.

Coca Cola

[suss]

Coca Cola went into a business partnership with Heinz to do the same thing with their bottles.
I remember seeing a press release about a month ago.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it impact the price?

Fresh juice

[luk3Z]

I rather prefer water with fresh juice than this sh!t.

"No artificial colours" ...

[jandersen]

This is like all the "no artificial ..." nonsense you see on food labels, which is designed to fool you into thinking this actually "natural" or even "good quality".

If you read the label carefully, you will see that "No artificial colour" means they have used things like carrot- or beetroot juice (or annatto extract); it never means that your strawberry jam is made entirely from strawberries.

And of course, bottles "made from plant materials" only means they have found an economically viable way to make poly-whatever from plant-based organics rather than petrochemical ones. In a word: Bogus.

Re:"No artificial colours" ...

[osu-neko]

Hmm. You're right, if you read the label carefully, you'll find it only means exactly what it says. It's not made "bogus" just because you had some weird idea that it meant something other than exactly what it says when apparently you were hoping it meant something else entirely. Perhaps I'm weird, but I really only expect "made entirely from strawberries" to mean "made entirely from strawberries". I don't expect other phrases to mean that. Even "all natural" wouldn't mean "made entirely from strawberries", it would merely mean made from nothing artificial. Silly me, I expect words to actually mean what they mean, and am not at all surprised when I found out they only meant what they said and didn't mean something entirely different.

Japan limited edition

[Anonymous Coward]

In Japan, Pepsi co. will unveiled a new bottle made entirely of power plant material

sony does this

[Anonymous Coward]

again no one reads this but...

Sony has already done this for years for it's biodegradable plastic packaging.

What about the stuff inside the bottles?

[zwarte piet]

I wish the contents of those pepsi bottles would be made of plant materials, preferably organic

A step in the right direction

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for Pepsi. Can you also change the product so it tastes better?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Skeptical Panda

[Anonymous Coward]

'Pepsi unveiled a new bottle yesterday made entirely of plant material."

Those plants are grown by a system that uses fertilizer, water all transported by objects that use oil/thingslikethat, ect. Those "plants" are then altered in some way by an undoubtedly expensive system that uses oil in some way. So, including all the factors, we really have no indication of how good or bad this is for the environment relative to the normal manufacturing system.

What type of person would fall for this?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Greenwashing

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply greenwashing. It's the hot new fad.

Back in Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Just go back to the old-fashioned returnable-for-deposit GLASS.

Awesome, about time except...

[hesaigo999ca]

It better not warp the taste of my pepsi if it sits in the fridge too long...I am all for the environment, but does this not add a more important time frame as to when things will expire, not only because of the actual product, but also because of the container wrapping it....if my expiration date is usually 3 months off, and because of this bio container, mixing in partially with the contents makes it go bad after 2 months, then there is an issue....I guess its a win win for pepsi though, just means they will have to drink faster an buy more to replenish the loss when it does happen.

On one hand, hooray for recycling

[Drakkenmensch]

On the other, my Pepsi tastes like orange peels and coffee grounds.

Pepsi Bottles

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the dark ages of the late 1970's I could buy our soda products in Virginia in glass bottles.
These bottles had a deposit on them which I gladly paid since they were recyclable and I got my
deposit back when I bought the next batch. Suddenly this concept disappeared and I suspect
it was because of the laziness of people. It's much easier to throw something in the trash or on
the side of the road when driving by in a vehicle (as confirmed by all the trash on Virginia's highways.
I only hope that these products are tested for at least a year in all kinds of weather and possible
leakage and chemicals mixing.
Thanks for the soapbox.

Coke did that last year

[Anonymous Coward]

Coke did that last year , they were showing it off at the Olympics, and a lot of the PlantBottles are still on the shelves.

Still, better to use inedible food waste than fossil fuels.

Hummer vs Pious

[jmorris42]

No, those lifetime numbers are probably correct. Hybrids come with long warranties on the hybrid drive because that is part of the subsidy. Price out a battery swap and you will understand. If a hybrid's warranty is expired you won't replace the battery, you will buy a new hybrid and get a new subsidized price. Meanwhile you can routinely run a modern gas engine several hundred thousand miles these days and worst case even drop a new/rebuilt engine under the hood of the Hummer. The Hummer is a well constructed vehicle so it isn't unreasonable to think that barring a crash or other unfortunate event it will be running for a long time.

Enlightenment

[jmorris42]

> It all makes perfect sense now. Thank you for opening my eyes.

It should, you just witnessed a 'green' letting the mask slip. It isn't at all about saving the earth, it is about controlling human behaviour. And from that point of view, and only from that point of view, Dachannien's post makes perfect sense. So long as oil is cheap we won't do what Dachannien & friends wants us to do and anything that gets in the way of that control is seen as bad.

switching

[Anonymous Coward]

switching to pepsi now

Why is Fanta so popular around the globe?

[Steve Hamlin]

Slate.com has an article about why Fanta is so popular around the globe.

Turns out Fanta was created by the head of Coca-Cola Germany during WW2 after Coke syrup stopping being shipped to Germany, and was initially made with whatever fruit could be found. ('fanta' after the German word for fantasy or imagination.) The brand name was revived in the 1950's when Coke needed to complete with an expanding line of Pepsi flavors oversees, and gained traction everywhere else, but was never pushed much in the U.S.

Share the wealth

[PhoenixBurn]

I seriously hope they are going to be sharing their new found secret for FREE for the benefit of the rest of mankind and the planet and are not just wanting fill their coffers with additional profits...