The Aquamantra Enso bottle will be available for shipment to store shelves in May 2009. The company said: “This is welcome news to retailers and consumers who have felt the pressure from environmental groups and consumers, who are concerned about exploding landfills bulging with non-recyclable-compostable plastics.”
Research carried out by analysts at Morgan Stanley has found that “23% of US consumers say they’re cutting back on bottled beverages in favour of tap water or beverages in containers that create less waste”.
Aquamantra founder and president, Alexandra Teklak, has been on a comprehensive search since her company’s inception to find a bottle that complements her Gold Award-winning Lohas brand, and meets the needs of consumers and retail partners who want creative solutions for the environmental crisis.
“Aquamantra strongly believes that consumers are entitled to choices as to what water they want to drink, which should include easy opportunities to be Earth-friendly. I didn’t want to find just any solution – I wanted to find a solution that worked for everyone,” said Teklak.
Aquamantra consultants and advisors investigated many alternatives, including PLA (cornstarch) bottles, and found that it wasn’t a viable solution for the public, not easy to dispose of and not necessarily the best solution for erasing carbon footprints.
“The reality is that water has to be packaged in a bottle that will not disintegrate on the store shelf in one or two years, and that’s an issue with the PLA bottle,” said Teklak. “We investigated the ‘Oxy-degradables’, but there were ‘big ifs’ surrounding it, such as an adequate amount of exposure to sunlight for degradation (which isn’t likely in a landfill). Finally, after searching for the right company, we found Enso, which was developing a form of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which could be recycled and biodegrades within one to five years, essentially a form of plastic that enables microbes to eat the bottle as dinner.”
The Aquamantra bottle doesn’t leach plastic, isn’t made from PLA, isn’t oxo-degradable, and is an FDA-approved ‘food grade’ PET 1 bottle. These bottles maintain the same properties as traditional PET and can be intermingled with standard PET in recycling streams and programmes. When the bottles end up in a microbial landfill, the bottle will break down within one to five years into inert biomass and biogas through either an anaerobic (no oxygen, no light) or aerobic decomposition. Enso bottles used by Aquamantra are validated through third party ASTM (Associated Standards and Testing Materials) standard tests, an international standards organisation.
“At Enso Bottles, we’re excited to work with Aquamantra,” said Danny Clark, founder of Enso Bottles. “Their awareness and concern for the environment aligns very well with Enso’s environmental mission, and provides their customers with not only water with a purpose, but also Earth-friendly packaging. This is the product that consumers have been waiting for. Now everyone can feel good about drinking refreshingly convenient bottled water again.”
Source: Aquamantra
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