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By Linda Casey
The Coca-Cola Company announces multi-million dollar partnership agreements with three biotechnology companies to speed development of a 100% plant-based PET bottle. The multi-million dollar partnership agreements with Virent, Gevo, and Avantium, encourages technology companies to follow their own route in making commercially viable biobased materials that meet both Coke’s requirements for its PlantBottle and industry recycling requirements.
Coke especially emphasized the need for the bottle to be compatible with existing recycling technologies. The company’s first generation PlantBottle packaging, which was introduced in 2009, is a fully recyclable PET bottle made with up to 30% plant-based material available today. The plant-based material is biobased mono-ethylene glycol. The other 70% is purified terephthalic acid (PTA). The company estimates the use of PlantBottle packaging has already helped save the equivalent annual emissions of more than 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. (More than 10 billion PlantBottle packages in 20 countries worldwide have been distributed worldwide since its introduction in 2009.) In this next step, PTA will be replaced with plant-based materials, too.
“While the technology to make bio-based materials in a lab has been available for years, we believe Virent, Gevo and Avantium are companies that possess technologies that have high potential for creating them on a global commercial scale within the next few years,” said Rick Frazier, vice president of commercial product supply for The Coca-Cola Company. “This is a significant R&D investment in packaging innovation and is the next step toward our vision of creating all of our plastic packaging from responsibly sourced plant-based materials.”
Learn more about The Coca-Cola Company’s PlantBottle project by listening to our sustainable packaging webinar that aired Tuesday, December 13. The Coca-Cola Company’s GM of the PlantBottle Packaging Platform Scott A. Vitters’ discussion of the PlantBottle Platform starts at 13:30. Use the slider bar in the left hand column to fast forward to the presentation.
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