Danone and Nestlé Waters have teamed up with the Californian Origin Materials start-up in the NaturALL Bottle Alliance to launch an industrial production of plastic bottles of biomaterial, TASS reported citing the Environmental Leader.
“Our goal is to build a cyclical economy in the packaging industry by attracting sustainable materials and reusing all plastics,” said Danone’s head of research and development in plastics, Frederic Jouin. According to him, plastic from fossil raw materials can be completely replaced with packaging from biomaterials.
For the production of biomass NaturALL Bottle Alliance will use biowaste – cardboard and sawdust. Manufacturers argue that the plastic on their basis will be as light, transparent and safe for storage as the one in which the drinks are being packaged now. The Alliance plans to produce 75% of bottles by new technology by 2020, and by 2022 to increase this figure to 95%.
At the pilot plant in Sacramento, California, Origin Materials has already released samples of bottles that are 80% bio-based. It is expected that the share of biocomponents in plastic bottles will increase gradually. Starting in 2018, the production of bottles consisting of organic components will begin at 60%. The primary goal of the alliance is to introduce to the market 5 thousand tons of “organic” PET.