By doing this, we can build on the consumers’ strong preference for PET, which already meets their needs and aspirations for product safety, purity, convenience, lifestyle, health and well-being.
This includes meeting and exceeding consumers increasing demands for better environmental performance. The customer has a right to expect that we’re all doing as much as we can to make our offering as sustainable and ‘environmentally friendly’ as possible.
The PET packaging industry has done much to reduce the environmental footprint of water packaging. Improvements in production machine technologies and advances in materials have allowed us to make major steps forward in lightweighting bottles. This has significantly improved efficiency in the use of materials and thus directly contributed to reductions in energy use and other environmental impacts.
The industry has also done much to improve the recycling capability of its product, and ‘bottle to bottle’ recycling is now the norm. We can now manufacture bottles using up to 100% recycled materials.
PET has a lower environmental impact than glass and is considered to be, by many, the environmental package of choice.
Even though we can clearly demonstrate the environmental and financial benefits for one-way ‘disposable’ PET containers, the environmental and economic performance of this format can still be improved upon.
One way we can do this is by reintroducing refillable (multi-trip) bottle systems in such a way that consumers instantly see the environmental logic and benefits. This could enable brand owners to grow market share and build a continuing relationship with consumers while improving their environmental credentials. This ultimately leads to improved brand loyalty and cash generation.
A study carried out by German research institute IFEU for the Genossenschaft Deutscher Brunnen (GDB) – a purchasing and servicing organisation with more than 160 member companies producing natural spring water – concluded: “The most ecologically favourable packaging system is the 1-litre reusable PET bottle. Of all the packaging systems studied, it clearly and consistently has the most advantageous environmental impact profile.”
IFEU and GDB are not alone in coming to the conclusion that “reusables are more environmentally friendly than disposables”.
A study by the Institute for Local Self Reliance in the US reviewed a number of academic studies on the environmental impacts of refillable and disposable bottles. Across a range of environmental impact indicators they found that the studies favoured refillable bottles.
Happily, there’s a strong economic case for refillables as well. A typical refillable bottle makes a minimum of 15 ’round trips’ (and often as many as 25) before it’s recycled and potentially used in the manufacture of new refillable bottles.
Although a refillable bottle can weigh twice as much as a one-way, disposable bottle of the same volume, the total material use for each consumer purchase using refillables is only a fraction of the material used with one-way bottles. This will be improved further with the continuing lightweighting programmes for refillables.
A company using one-way bottles can spend around four to five times as much each year on packaging than a company that bottles the same quantity of water in refillable bottles, which it needs to replace only once in every 15 trips. The economic benefit of refillable bottles could be even higher if each bottle makes 25 trips.
This is an important argument in support of refillables, as resin prices will inexorably rise and be more volatile over the medium term partly due to the increasing demand from a rising world population and continued industrialisation of the BRIC nations. Resin prices are now at new record levels, having almost doubled since the start of 2009.
Not only are there strong ECO-nomic arguments for refillables but they also provide an ideal marketing platform, delivering increased opportunities to interact with the consumer through the return logistics. It also gives further opportunities for environmental and commercial messaging and provides an additional platform for environmental promotions, all leading to increases in brand loyalty.
Refillable bottles out-perform all other types of packaging for water in terms of economy and the environment, and the obvious environmental logic of reusing bottles makes this message easy to communicate to consumers.
Refillable bottles should be the packaging of choice for the bottled water industry. If promoted properly, refillable bottles will be the choice that consumers demand.
Nigel Pritchard is chief executive of Petainer, a specialist engineering and technology business and a leader in the development, design and manufacture of PET plastic containers.
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