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

Disposal

[MrEricSir]

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

Also, are they biodegradable?

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: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: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

[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.

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: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.