Reduce, reduce, reduce ‘Reduce, reduce, reduce’ was the war-cry throughout 2010, with lightweighting going perhaps as far as it could go for bottles. Some stunning design and engineering solutions took the weight of preforms and the height of necks (and closures) about as low as they might possibly go.
Replace, replace, replace Next came ‘replace, replace, replace’, with more and more brands opting to use increasing amounts of recycled PET (rPET) and some choosing to replace traditional petrochemical-derived PET with a proportion (and sometimes all) of material derived from plants. Biodegradable and compostable solutions continued as a limited trend too, but with the realisation that until more industrial-scale composting facilities exist, this remains an idea still perhaps ahead of its time.
Recover, recycle, reuse Of course, if you want to reuse PET, you need to recover it, so ‘recover, recycle, reuse’ became the next mantra. We still look back at the multi-company PET-2-PET initiative in Austria to see best practice in action, but consider that initiatives that educate consumers at point of purchase present the most exciting opportunities.
The three ‘R’s At school in the UK, we used to talk about the education essentials of ‘reading (w)riting and (a)rythmetic’ (I know, it was terrible then and I still cringe now), but now the environmental lobby ‘owns’ all the ‘r’ words. We started with ‘reduce’, added ‘replace’ and moved swiftly on to ‘recover, recycle, reuse’. But we are also seeing ‘refresh’, being a strong link between what water essentially does and the new approach to packaging, ‘rethink’ when it comes to using plants rather than oil, and ‘revive’ when we consider that old material can have an efficient and effective second life.
Of course, if you’re a frequent visitor to FoodBev.com or a subscriber to Water Innovation, you’ll know that we regularly and reliably report, review and revitalise all that’s new, inspiring and innovative in the bottled water industry.
The next issue of *Water Innovation* magazine looks at rPET in great detail, and you’ll find more about each of the following bottles by visiting our ‘green bottles’ gallery.
The following list is in alphabetical order, and is not a ranking list.
To close, here are some questions …
Bill Bruce is group editorial director of FoodBev Media. You can contact him here
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