Green Bottles Go Towards a Plastic-free World

This week we are introducing you to three ‘Green Bottle’ concepts initiated by students, a private company and a big corporate, helping to address the multitude of plastic we concusme and throw away and edging us towards a plastic-free world.

Autor*in Louisa Wong -, 04.03.14

This week we are introducing you to three ‘Green Bottle’ concepts initiated by students, a private company and a big corporate, helping to address the multitude of plastic we concusme and throw away and edging us towards a plastic-free world.

In the United States alone, less than 20 percent of the 50 billion plastic water bottles sold are actually recycled. The remaining 40 billion end up in landfills, waterways and oceans, giving off toxins and harming marine life. Given the impact of plastic bottles on the environment, various kinds of environmentally-friendly products, such as 100 percent Recycled PET (RPET), plant-based, petroleum- free and totally bio-degradable plastic bottles have been launched in the market in recent years.

Students Design Edible Water Bottle

The Ooho is a blob-like water container made out of an edible algae membrane which can be ‘cooked up’ in our own kitchens.

It was created by London-based industrial design students, Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, Pierre Pasalier and Guillaume Couche of Skipping Rocks Lab. The water container was inspired by the way that liquid drops form and how egg yolks work. It was created using a culinary technique called ‘spherification’ where water is held inside by a double gelatinous membrane without a rigid form. The size of the sphere can also be controlled when the water is in the form of ice during the ‘packaging’ process. Since the gel around the water is created from brown algae and calcium chloride, the designers envision that this product can be something for people to prepare in their own kitchens and can be eaten or safely thrown away. People can put their their creativity to work with innovative recipes and cook their own water containers at home! This brilliant design recently won the Lexus Design Award 2014 and will be on exhibit at Milan Design Week, to be held next week.

From Green Bottles to Clean Energy

The private spring water company Treeson designed a self-sustaining and eco-friendly water bottle that is made from plant-based materials  and is completely biodegradable, compostable and GMO and toxin-free. The bottle can be easily flattened and returned for free via the US postal service. This bottle will then be turned into clean energy with a machine that converts the material into biogas.

As stated in their Kickstarter campaign pitch, “it’s a totally new system that eliminates trash and uses the bottle returned to make clean energy”. Treeson water bottles have the added benefit of planting a tree for every bottle sold and they use only water from a natural spring in Costa Rica.

Biodegradable Pepsi Bottle

Big corporations like Pepsico, who produce beverages like Pepsi and and Mountain Dew, are also beginning to follow suit adopt green practices. In 2011, the company introduced a bottle that is made from switch grass, pine bark and corn husks, materials that are bi- products of the company’s food business. As Peachygreen has commented, “a corporation of this size, making a change of this magnitude will make a real difference in the environment for us and for generations of people and animals to come,” however the chemical make-up of the bottle has come under fire. 

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Paying with Plastic

Vancouver-based social business The Plastic Bank trades reusable old plastic for credits, opening up new value-driven streams for people in impoverished communities and simultaneously spreading the word about ridding our oceans and waterways of plastic garbage.