PepsiCo joins Nestlé and Danone’s bottle research alliance

PepsiCo has joined the NaturALL Bottle Alliance, a research consortium formed by Danone, Nestlé Waters and Origin Materials to accelerate the development of 100% renewable and sustainable bottles.

The overall goal of the alliance is to create packaging solutions which significantly reduce the carbon impact of plastic beverage bottles, and the alliance is currently attempting to produce a PET bottle made purely from bio-based materials such as cardboard and sawdust.

A statement from the alliance claims that the consortium has already produced samples of 80% bio-based PET for a pilot scheme, and expects to achieve a 95% bio-based bottle after the construction and upgrade of a production site in Sarnia, Canada is completed in 2020.

The alliance claims that it intends to make bottles commercially available to the food and beverage industry once it has reached this milestone.

PepsiCo’s R&D capabilities will help the alliance achieve this goal, according to the statement.

Mehmood Khan, PepsiCo vice-chairman and chief scientific officer said: “Creating more sustainable packaging requires innovation through the value chain.

“Producing PET from sustainable bio-based sources that do not diminish food resources and are fully recyclable is a great example of such innovation and an important contributor to PepsiCo’s sustainable packaging program.

“Through our Performance with Purpose agenda, PepsiCo is committed to reducing the carbon impact of packaging in line with our goal to reduce absolute emissions of greenhouse gases by 20% by 2030; bio-based PET has the potential to reduce significantly the carbon footprint of our PET bottles, a huge contribution to our efforts in this area.

“We are excited to add PepsiCo’s R&D capabilities to the Alliance and look forward to seeing what the combined efforts of the Alliance members can achieve.”

Frédéric Jouin, head of research and development for plastic materials at Danone added: “We are very enthusiastic about PepsiCo joining the Alliance.

“By bringing together major players and pooling our complementary expertise and resources, we can make 100% renewable and recyclable PET plastic at commercial scale a reality.

“We also expect to see additional opportunities for this breakthrough technology.”

Massimo Casella, Nestlé Waters’ head of Research and Development said: “We are pleased to welcome PepsiCo into the NaturALL bottle Alliance. Their addition is further proof of the importance of this disruptive technology.

“The Alliance has taken an important step in working together to tackle the challenges around plastic packaging.

“Developing 100% bio-based PET is one way Nestlé is working to use more materials from sustainably managed renewable resources.”

Last week, PepsiCo made an additional sustainability commitment by pledging to triple the content of recycled plastic in its bottles throughout the EU by 2030.