Plastic bottles: cheap, effective and ingrained into the industry, making it one of the biggest challenges when trying to reduce our plastic use globally. However, Paboco, a Danish firm backed by Coca-Cola is about to trial 2,000 almost fully paper bottles. Their prototype is designed with an extra-strong paper shell and a thin plastic liner inside. You may be wondering why plastic is still being used to make these bottles. This is because steps need to be taken before that to achieve the end goal. These include solving the problems that make designing these paper bottles so hard.
The most obvious problems are you need a bottle that can both withstand the forces exerted by fizzy drinks (which are bottled under pressure), as well as a material that would not flake off into the drink (which would pose safety issues). So, for the moment, including smaller amounts of plastic is needed to make this bottle effective.
If the trial this summer with Coca-Cola’s fruit drink Adez is successful the idea is to then think about using a bio-based barrier between the paper and the liquid, to replace the plastic liner.
There is much left to do, yet it can gladly be said that these are steps in the right direction.
Written by Jazz
Artwork by Delicia
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