Reducing carbon footprint of plastic bottle
Client: The Coca-Cola Company
Consultant: Dr Richard Murphy, Dr Jeremy Woods and Miss Miao Guo, LCAworks
Expertise: Life cycle analysis
Our consultants shared their expertise in life cycle analysis to compare the carbon footprints generated by the The Coca-Cola Company’s new PlantBottle™ versus their previous PET plastic bottle.
The Challenge
The Coca-Cola Company had developed a new bottle made through a process that turns sugar cane and molasses, a by-product of sugar production, into a monoethylene glycol, a major component of PET plastic. The packaging is made of up to 30% plant-based material and can be recycled in the existing recycling infrastructure. The challenge was to quantify the environmental benefits of the product.
The Solution
Through Imperial Consultants, LCAworks members Dr Richard Murphy, Dr Jeremy Woods and Miss Miao Guo carried out a full life-cycle analysis of the product as a major part of Coca Cola’s development programme.
The Impact
The life cycle analysis confirmed that the new PlantBottle™ reduced the CO2 impact 12-19% compared to petroleum-based PET plastic bottles. In 2010 alone, the use of this breakthrough packaging eliminated the equivalent of almost 300,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, or approximately 60,000 barrels of oil.
The bottle is being piloted by Coca Cola North America in select markets and has also won the gold prize in the innovation and sustainability category at the DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation which is an award that is recognised for environmental achievements in the area of packaging and is also the industry’s longest running, independently judged awards honouring materials, processing, technology and service achievements that demonstrate excellence in packaging innovation, sustainability and cost/waste reduction.
Share post:
Related case studies
Virtual worlds for real-life problems
Our consultants shared their expertise in new media applications in healthcare to help introduce the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center chemotherapy clinic staff and patients to a virtual world equivalent using the open source Second Life application. read more
Bio-Inspired Aerial Robotics
Dr Mirko Kovac is Director of the Aerial Robotics Laboratory at Imperial College London, and Senior Lecturer in Aero-structures. His research focuses on the development of biologically inspired flying robots for distributed sensing of air and water, search and rescue plus autonomous repair and construction. read more
DISPERSE: Making sense of sound waves
Disperse is an interactive software package for studying guided sound waves in a wide range of structures and components. Its principal applications are the exploitation of guided waves for non destructive evaluation across all industries including aerospace, power generation, and oil and gas. read more