8/3/2019 BS 19Dec Green Bottles

1/1

WILLIAM NEUMAN

Over their decades of competi-tion, the battle between Coca-Cola and PepsiCo has taken onmany colours brown (cola),orange (juice), blue (sport

drinks) and clear (water).Now, they are fighting over

green: The beverage rivals areracing to become the first toproduce a plastic soda bottlemade entirely from plants.

But despite duellingannouncements claimingtechnological breakthroughs,consumers should not expectto see many all-plant bottleson store shelves any time soon.

Neither company is confidentenough in the technology tosay when, or even if, they willbe able to deliver on their envi-ronmental ambitions.

Coke delivered the latestvolley on Thursday, saying itplans to work with three com-panies that are developingcompeting technologies tomake plastic from plants, withbottles rolling out to con-sumers in perhaps a few years.

PepsiCo is aiming to beatthat timeline and claim the 100per cent green label first. Thecompany declared in Marchthat it had cracked the code ofthe all-plant plastic bottle, andon Thursday, it said that it wason schedule to conduct a testnext year that involved pro-ducing 200,000 bottles madefrom plant-only plastic.

But until Pepsi conducts thetest, executives said they would

not be able to predict whenlarge-scale production of suchbottles might begin. If the testfails to prove that the technolo-gies favored by Pepsi are cost-effective at a commercial scale,more experimentation will beneeded, said Denise H Lefebvre,the companys vice-presidentfor global beverage packaging.

The test is very importantin really determining efficient

cost and manufacturingprocesses, Lefebvre said. Shesaid the company was stillworking out details of the test,including what products to sellin the all-plant bottles andwhat type of plant materials touse to produce them.

Coke was the first out of thegate in the green bottle race,when in 2009 it began sellingDasani water in the UnitedStates in bottles made with up

to 30 per cent plant-based plas-tics. (In some cases, recycled

plastic may decrease the plant-based amount.)

On Thursday the companysaid that by 2020 all of its plas-tic bottles would meet the 30per cent plant-based standard.

But the company was morecautious about when it couldstart selling beverages in bot-tles made entirely from plant

materials. We will set the tar-get once we havethe commercialtechnology inplace, said ScottVitters, the generalmanager of Cokesplant bottle pack-aging platform.

One of Cokesnew partners,Virent, a Wisconsin-based bio-

fuel and chemical companypartly owned by Cargill, Shelland Honda, said it hoped tohave a large-scale plant to pro-duce plastic for beverage bot-tles up and running in 2015.

Vitters would say only thatsome commercial productionof 100 per cent plant-basedplastic bottles was achievablein the next few years. Theexception is Cokes Odwallajuice brand, which already uses

all plant-based material tomake a type of plastic suitable

for juices.The two other companies

working with Coke to developthe all-plant soda bottles areGevo and Avantium.

Lefebvre said that Pepsi wasfollowing a similar path to theone Coke announced Thursday,teaming up with companiesthat are developing different

ways of solving the plastic puz-zle. But shedeclined to identi-fy the partners.

Soda bottles aremade from a typeof plastic known asPET, which com-monly has twomain components.One, called MEG,

makes up about 30 per cent of

a bottles weight, and is whatCoke has been producing fromplant sources, using sugarcanegrown in Brazil.

The other component,called PTA, makes up 70 percent of a bottles weight.Scientists have been able tomake PTA from plant materialsin the laboratory but pulling offthe same trick on an industrialscale has proved more difficult.

Vitters said that production

capacity for MEG, used in the30 per cent plant bottle, was

poised to increase drastically.The material is produced inonly one facility today, but atleast two additional factoriesare expected to begin produc-tion next year.

Allen Hershkowitz, a senior

scientist at the NationalResources Defense Council, anenvironmental group, said thatthe production processesinvolved in creating plastics fromplant sources generated smalleramounts of greenhouse gases,which contribute to climatechange, when compared withplastics made from petroleum.

But he said the source of theplant materials was important

in assessing the environmentalimpact.Hershkowitz said that using

agricultural waste products,like corn stalks or other mate-rials left over from farming,was better than using crops,such as sugarcane or corn thatare grown specifically for plas-tic production.

Growing crops for plasticcauses a lot of land conversion,it affects the price of food, it

uses a lot of fertilisers, he said.Pepsi has said it will use

agricultural waste products,such as corn husks, pine barkor orange peels, to make itsplastic bottles. Vitters said thatCoke might use a variety ofmaterials, including wastesand crops grown for plasticproduction.

Regardless of how they areproduced, Hershkowitz saidthat plant-based plastics still

create litter and solid wasteproblems. He said companieslike Coke and Pepsi shouldendorse legislation that wouldrequire the food and consumerproducts industries to financerecycling operations, in orderto greatly increase plastic recy-cling.

Both Coke and Pepsi havebroad initiatives to make theiroperations more environmen-

tally friendly, taking steps tocut back on factors such aswater and energy use.

But the companies playeddown the potential marketingbenefits inherent in being thefirst to the market with an all-plant bottle.

We dont feel its a raceLefebvre said. We feel likewere all working together to dobetter for the environment andalso to make good business

sense.2011 The New York Times News Service

The race to greener bottles may be long

Both Coke andPepsi have broadinitiatives to maketheir operationsmore environmentfriendly, takingsteps to cut back onwater and energy