PepsiCo develops 100 percent plant-based PET bottle

PepsiCo has developed the world’s first PET plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based, fully renewable resources, enabling the company to manufacture a beverage container with a significantly reduced carbon footprint.

PepsiCo’s “green” bottle is 100 percent recyclable and far surpasses existing industry technologies. The bottle is made from bio-based raw materials, including switch grass, pine bark and corn husks. In the future, the company expects to broaden the renewable sources used to create the “green” bottle to include orange peels, potato peels, oat hulls and other agricultural byproducts from its foods business. This process further reinforces PepsiCo’s “Power of One” advantage by driving a strategic beverage innovation via a food-based solution.

Combining biological and chemical processes, PepsiCo has identified methods to create a molecular structure that is identical to petroleum-based polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which results in a bottle that looks, feels and protects its product identically to existing PET beverage containers.

PepsiCo will pilot production of the new bottle in 2012.

Upon successful completion of the pilot, the company intends to move directly to full-scale commercialization.