VeganBottle is a new alternative to environmentally-unfriendly one-use plastic bottles – made from a plant-based, fully biodegradable and recyclable bioplastic.
Is the age of the plastic water bottle coming to an end? Not if predictions are anything to go by. According to data from the Guardian, one million plastic bottles are sold around the globe every single minute. And annual consumption is set to top half a trillion by 2021. But there are several initiatives that are taking steps – however small – in the right direction. Like Berlin and Bristol’s free tap water initiatives, the Liter of Light invention which turns used plastic bottles into solar lightbulbs, and even futuristic water “blobs” that are made out of seaweed and completely edible.
VeganBottle is a 100% biodegradable bottle made from sugar cane manufactured by a French packaging company, Lyspackaging. Nicolas Moufflet, the engineer behind this project and president of the company, has spent several years developing the technology needed to create a plastic bottle – where every single component, including the lid and the label, are biodegradable.
His solution combines sugar cane bagasse (the fibre/pulp that remains after extracting the sugar cane juice) with other plant-based products (the exact patented formula is secret) to produce the material that is also suitable not just for holding water, but also other liquids too – including oil, beer or even perfume.
In fact, VeganBottles can even be produced to match up with whatever liquids they will later contain. Bottles made for olive oil, for example, can be produced using olive kernel extract.
A well-known contemporary art centre in Paris, the Palais de Tokyo, has already requested 100,000 VeganBottles. And Lyspackaging – that currently produces primarily traditional plastic bottles – is planning to move half of its production to the biodegradable alternative, aiming to reach 80% of production by 2020.
