Coke's PlantBottle Hits Home

In an earlier post I mentioned that Coca-Cola has already had its green bottle on the market for a couple years now. What makes the bottle green is that 30% of its content comes from materials that are renewable as they're made from plants. I was excited to see at work today that our latest shipment of Dasani, which is produced by Coke, is also housed in the container. It had previously only been available in the Western United States in this form.

As Coke explains on their site, they've been able to create the bottle by using different ingredients in the synthesis of its plastic, polyethylene terephthalate or PET, which is commonly known as Type 1 and the material most plastic bottles are made from. This involved replacing a petroleum-based ingredient with the same chemical derived from sugarcane-based ethanol. This accounts for the renewable component of the bottle. The remaining 70% consists of terephthalic acid, which Coke has not yet been able to derive from plants. With the release of Pepsi's latest green bottle, however, it now seems that they've been beaten to the punch. As it is Coke's aim to take that step themselves and shift all of its packaging to renewable forms I expect that we will soon see plant-based plastics dominate the marketplace.

As Coke astutely points out "Just because a material is made from plants doesn't mean it's necessarily better for the environment or society." For that reason they've made efforts to remedy the issues their campaign could potentially give rise to. By using sugarcane-based ethanol from Brazil they've better ensured that their latest operations don't actually produce more additional carbon than is saved. This supply choice simultaneously keeps production from crowding out food supplies. That Brazilian ethanol is so conducive to these aims has interesting implications for the agricultural subsidies in America keeping it out of this country.

It's worth noting here that the plant-based components of the PlantBottle are not necessarily biodegradable and that even biodegradation doesn't always eliminate toxic chemicals. In other words, once Coke launches its 100% plant-based bottle, it still won't be as simple as throwing it into a compost bin, which arguably isn't very effective in terms of energy and resource use anyway. Rather, these bottles will have to be channeled into a recycling system that could conceivably go on to have the materials reused indefinitely if well-managed.

This initiative has highlighted for me a couple of best practices in sustainable business that I have in part articulated elsewhere. First, if you're going to create persistent or harmful wastes as a byproduct of production, make sure the channels for indefinitely reusing them are available and utilized. That's the direction Coke is currently moving in. Second, in the event that wastes escape your recycling system, work it out such that they don't come back to bite us, preferably by making them nontoxic, if not both nontoxic and biodegradable.

I say nontoxic and biodegradable because as I alluded to earlier 'biodegradable' is too vague a term to adequately guide sustainability decisions. It's even been used to describe PET and other plastics, since they inevitably break down into smaller pieces. But that's actually a problem, since their fundamental chemistry remains the same and poses threats to biology. What I propose is coining a new term for these purposes - perhaps bioconvertible - to describe materials that we know can be chemically transformed into something useful or at least harmless by natural processes, a class that would largely consist of time-tested, "natural" materials.

PlantBottle leaves us with some of the same issues that the conventional PET bottle does. We wouldn't want it to get into our oceans, for instance, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. The growing niche for recycling Coke and Pepsi's efforts are creating promises to make the collection process more widespread and efficient and thus reduce the risk of persistent litter. Most importantly, plant-based plastics take advantage of an underutilized resource in the form of agricultural byproducts and reduce our dependency on foreign resources and fossil fuels. Let's just hope that the resulting decrease in oil demand won't lead to a commensurate drop in its price that would tempt us to use it even longer.

This move has come about as a result of public pressure exerted by citizens either at the consumer level or as it translates into government policy. Thanks to consciousness of the repercussions of their actions, market actors are improving the efficiency of how the market operates. That process has afforded us healthier alternatives at no greater financial cost while creating business opportunities in the recycling industry and elsewhere. Without that development, business would have gone on as usual and these advances wouldn't have materialized until precipitated by external shocks, such as spikes in oil prices. This dynamic underscores the importance of continuing to build such awareness of the consequences of our decisions and the responsibility that comes with freedom.

Perhaps Coke's experience will one day lead it to push bioplastics more than carbonated beverages. Who am I kidding?

The End of Growth?

I came across this video recently that aptly summarizes the developments that have led to our current predicament. It turns out that it's part of a promotional campaign for The End of Growth, a book which, predictably enough, argues we are entering a permanent era of no growth. The book in turn is sponsored by the Post-Carbon Institute.



It's worth asking whether growth can be sustained and, if not, whether that change is already upon us, as both answers would have profound implications for our way of life. This is not least of all because it would result in a zero-sum game, the subject of another book.

At first I wasn't particularly convinced that growth could already be coming to an end, but feared that that was only because society and my education had trained me to think otherwise. I even questioned the idea that growth can't go on indefinitely. I'm still not a convert to the idea that the economy is stalling, if only because the theory of no growth requires that environments don't change. As long as shocks still rock our system, and they always will, whether in the form of natural disasters or changing demographics, there will always be some lost ground to make up for.

I also wonder whether it wouldn't be possible to continue expanding economically on the basis of abstract goods that require no increase in material inputs. Equipped with our faculties as humans and a fixed level of capital, we could confer something of value, perhaps even something that makes people more productive, in the form of providing advice or inspiring others, to name just a few. It would only require mobilizing existing resources in a different way. Instead of watching videos, for instance, you could spend an evening disseminating best work habits.

Even this area of activity, however, is subject to diminishing returns. As a result, although we might not see an end to growth, we will at minimum witness it taper off. What we understand least is when and how quickly this condition will materialize. The level of uncertainty surrounding its timing might be sufficient to warrant taking the cautious path and preparing for such developments in advance. It makes me wonder whether that's what the Post-Carbon Institute is hoping to precipitate through its work, quite possibly by making premature predictions and consciously so.

There's a lot to explore on this topic and I've only hit upon the tip of the iceberg. Because of the pressing need to adjust to the end of growth, as PCI puts it, they've made excerpts from the book available on their site. I'm already in the process of reading them over and will likely add more thoughts on the issue at a later point.