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Pepsi Moving To Bottles Made of Plant Material

Posted by samzenpus on from the dew-in-the-corn dept.

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.'"

12 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. How about glass by ron_ivi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:How about glass by xMrFishx · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

    2. Re:How about glass by Kozz · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      --
      I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
    3. Re:How about glass by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:How about glass by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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?

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    5. Re:How about glass by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Re:Disposal by RapmasterT · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

  3. Re:Just one problem... by gman003 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Its as disposable as PET? by perpenso · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. made entirely of plant material by flaming+error · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  6. Re:Just one problem... by The+Grim+Reefer2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:Just one problem... by mattack2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.)