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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.'"
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.
How do we dispose of them? Are they as recyclable as petroleum-based plastics?
Also, are they biodegradable?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I guess it's still the 1950's in Mexico, since they're still washing out and reusing glass bottles.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
Biodegradable since when? They're just weaning themselves off petroleum; the end product is exactly the same.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
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.
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.
Sounds like the bottle is more suitable for human consumption than its contents.
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.
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.
[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.)
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.