Interview
PET: energy efficiency, lightweighting, & rPET – 3
What are the two leading questions for the bottled water industry when discussing PET? In the last of three interviews, Water Innovation magazine asks Luc Desoutter, sustainable officer, Sidel.
If recycled properly, PET can live forever.Luc Desoutter
Lightweighting and energy efficient production
There have been dozens of lightweighting initiatives in the past few years, dramatically reducing wall thickness and neck heights. In preform production and bottle blowing huge energy savings have also been achieved. What’s next? Can bottles really become any lighter — and can production become even more energy efficient? How does Sidel see the future?
Luc Desoutter Lightweighting can be further developed, but it has to be looked at in a holistic manner with secondary and tertiary packaging, taking into account all conveying, logistics and shelf life aspects. These can vary from one region to another. Consumer acceptance, package quality perception and brand image can also define the limits: it’s really a case by case approach.
When it comes to carbonated products, Sidel’s own Actis Lite technology accounts for significant savings in material costs due to a reduced bottle weight of 15 to 20%. For example, a 60Ccl PET carbonated drink bottle that weighs 25g has a shelf life of approximately eight weeks. The same bottle, when treated with Actis Lite and reduced to 23g, has a shelf life of over 20 weeks and results in an 18% saving of PET resin.
Over the past five years, Sidel has launched a number of innovative lightweight bottles:
- With only 9.9 g per 50cl bottle, NoBottle was the first lightweight PET bottle below 10g. It can be manufactured and distributed on an industrial scale and weighs between 25 and 40% less than an average water bottle with the same capacity, resulting in less plastic material to be recycled.
- The PET bottle SmartWeight for still water offers high user comfort with less than 10g for a 50cl bottle. This ultra lightweight is accomplished by the overstroke base technology.
- Recently, Sidel worked on a short neck project for one of Danone’s bottled water brands. We achieved a reduction of 23% on neck finish weight and 13% on cap weight.”
Recycled PET
Many brand owners are pushing for greater and greater proportions of recycled PET (rPET) in their bottles while others are choosing to move over to plant-based PET. What challenges are faced using these new polymers and where does Sidel see the future for rPET?
Luc Desoutter rPET can be used in PET bottles as long as it is approved for food contact. Brand owners are promoting even stronger specifications. Currently, there is not enough high-quality rPET available but a number of major brands are still committed to using rPET. This is a virtuous circle: showing consumers that PET can be recycled back into a bottle. This is an incentive for them to recycle.
For instance, Spa Monopole in Belgium already uses 50% rPET in their mineral water bottles; the same applies for Martens Brewery. Danone currently uses 25% rPET for its Evian and Volvic export bottles, and Coca Cola is committed to sourcing 25% of its PET from recycled materials by 2015.
No matter what kind of packaging is concerned, the first step to an effective use of rPET is the collection of used PET bottles. Much progress has been made in this field. But – as accounts for all packaging materials – more consumer education is required.
Theoretically, biomass is capable of substituting conventional petroleum. No need to invent new materials, the point is to be able to extract the right chemicals from bio mass in an efficient way (economically, technically, without compromising food supply etc). Existing plastic materials can then be made from these renewable sources. Many of such initiatives have started for PET. Coca-Cola and, more recently, Danone, have shown the way by starting using a PET with partial bio based content: MEG that accounts in 30% of the PET manufacture is sourced for Cane molasses, a renewable source instead of gas. Further developments are being carried out for 100% Bio based PET and are to be announced in 2012.
In the coming decades, renewable resources will play a more and more important role. As for now, PET based on crude oil is current state of the art and we will do our best to implement as many recycled materials as possible. If recycled properly, PET can live forever.”
See also
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Water Innovation looks at the spectrum of packaged water, from still and sparkling source waters through purified alternatives to flavoured and functional developments.
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