Casey Container: Plastic Bottles That Are Both Recyclable and Biodegradable?
source: http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/05/casey-container-missing-link-plastic-bottles-both-recycl...
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Plastics from single serving water bottles, or grocery bags accumulating in the world’s oceans have long been in the spotlight as eco villians.
Initially, biodegradable and compostable plant material based bottles seemed to be the cure for this convenience quandary. But beyond the simple math of eliminating petroleum as source material, there’s a problem: Most bioplastic doesn’t compost, unless in a professional environment (some don’t, even then). Bioplastics are not recyclable, since they are a different in formulation from conventional PET plastic. When they are accidentally included in recycling processing, it gums up the machinery.
To make matters worse, bioplastic, when tossed in the trash by people believing it would biodegrade, actually releases methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
In the past few years, companies such as Coca Cola and Pepsi have been working on bridging the gap, making plant based bottles that are also recyclable. A step forward, but in Coke’s case it’s 30% plant based, sourced from purpose grown sugar cane ethanol. While a Coca Cola representative told me “Estimates show that sugarcane production in Brazil could increase thirty times without endangering sensitive ecosystems or taking land destined for food crops,” the question arises, why even grow food crops for bottles when Pepsi is currently creating bottles sourced primarily from food production scraps?
While Coke continues to work on making the bottle 100% plant based and we wait to see if Pepsi will license it’s bottle technology to other companies, an interesting third option has been quietly innovating: Casey Container.
Casey Container has created an additive usable with a wide range of plastics, even rubber, that allows the resulting product to be usable in all its usual applications, while being both recyclable and biodegradable. The resulting biodegraded material is not simply smaller pieces of plastic that continue to be an ecological issue. It becomes harmless biogas and biomatter. And rather than needing heat, light and moisture to begin the process of biodegrading and thus not working in tightly packed landfills, it is activated by the very microbes typically found in landfills.
Post Continues: http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/05/casey-container-missing-link-plastic-bottles...
Initially, biodegradable and compostable plant material based bottles seemed to be the cure for this convenience quandary. But beyond the simple math of eliminating petroleum as source material, there’s a problem: Most bioplastic doesn’t compost, unless in a professional environment (some don’t, even then). Bioplastics are not recyclable, since they are a different in formulation from conventional PET plastic. When they are accidentally included in recycling processing, it gums up the machinery.
To make matters worse, bioplastic, when tossed in the trash by people believing it would biodegrade, actually releases methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
In the past few years, companies such as Coca Cola and Pepsi have been working on bridging the gap, making plant based bottles that are also recyclable. A step forward, but in Coke’s case it’s 30% plant based, sourced from purpose grown sugar cane ethanol. While a Coca Cola representative told me “Estimates show that sugarcane production in Brazil could increase thirty times without endangering sensitive ecosystems or taking land destined for food crops,” the question arises, why even grow food crops for bottles when Pepsi is currently creating bottles sourced primarily from food production scraps?
While Coke continues to work on making the bottle 100% plant based and we wait to see if Pepsi will license it’s bottle technology to other companies, an interesting third option has been quietly innovating: Casey Container.
Casey Container has created an additive usable with a wide range of plastics, even rubber, that allows the resulting product to be usable in all its usual applications, while being both recyclable and biodegradable. The resulting biodegraded material is not simply smaller pieces of plastic that continue to be an ecological issue. It becomes harmless biogas and biomatter. And rather than needing heat, light and moisture to begin the process of biodegrading and thus not working in tightly packed landfills, it is activated by the very microbes typically found in landfills.
Post Continues: http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/05/casey-container-missing-link-plastic-bottles...
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- groups:
- Green
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- tags:
- Recycling, CO2 Emissions, Greenhouse Gas, Start Ups, 3 more
