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Earth Beer

Coca-Cola Begins Testing a Paper Bottle (bbc.com) 186

"Coca-Cola is to test a paper bottle as part of a longer-term bid to eliminate plastic from its packaging entirely," reports the BBC: The prototype is made by a Danish company from an extra-strong paper shell that still contains a thin plastic liner. But the goal is to create a 100% recyclable, plastic-free bottle capable of preventing gas escaping from carbonated drinks. The barrier must also ensure no fibres flake off into the liquid...

Coca-Cola was ranked the world's number one plastic polluter by charity group Break Free From Plastic last year, closely followed by other drink-producers Pepsi and Nestle... Part of the challenge has been to create a structure capable of withstanding the forces exerted by fizzy drinks — such as cola and beer — which are bottled under pressure. On top of that, the paper needs to be mouldable, to create distinct bottle shapes and sizes for different brands, and take ink for printing their labels.

After more than seven years of lab work, the firm is now ready to host a trial in Hungary this summer of Coca-Cola's fruit drink Adez. Initially, this will involve 2,000 bottles distributed via a local retail chain. But it is also working with others. Absolut, the vodka-maker, is due to test 2,000 paper bottles of it own in the UK and Sweden of its pre-mixed, carbonated raspberry drink. And beer company Carlsberg is also building prototypes of a paper beer bottle.

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Coca-Cola Begins Testing a Paper Bottle

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  • easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superzerg ( 1523387 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @02:47PM (#61059828)
    Beer found the solution hundred of years ago: use glass bottles ! they can be reused many times and are also easily recycled.
    • Re:easy solution (Score:5, Informative)

      by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @02:52PM (#61059856)

      hey can be reused many times and are also easily recycled

      They technically can, but last time I looked, they weren't. Glass bottles are regularly sorted into piles by color, but aren't cost effective enough to actually be reused. NYC used to have a glass recycling program, but it just accumulated those piles in a corner of landfills because no one would take them for free. A lot of places don't bother collecting the glass for that reason (but gladly collect aluminum or the right plastics).

      • Re: easy solution (Score:4, Informative)

        by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @03:19PM (#61059978)

        My town used to collect glass but ended up with a large pile of it and couldn't even pay someone to take it. Eventually they found someone to take it but stopped glass recycling permentaly. It is too expensive.

        • Most items which are in recycling programs don't make sense to recycle. When something makes sense to recycle, people pay you for it in order to recycle it, you don't pay them to take it away. The technical term for that stuff is "trash".

          Also, we call containers which are made primarily of an "extra-strong paper shell" boxes, not bottles. See also, cheap wine.

      • Re: easy solution (Score:2, Insightful)

        by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 )

        Well, of course, if they offload all the costs of ruining the environment onto our children, plastic bottles are more "cost effective".

        I call that robbery on an epic scale. Unless they go and fish out ALL the microplastics from the oceans, and factor *that* into their costs, I say they must go to prison. How about life sentence for mass-murder equivalent for all managers that worked there? Or is that too much straiggtforward fairness? ^^

        And around here, much of the glass always is returned, and re-used stra

        • . I have yet to see mountains of glass anywhere.

          In fairness, when is the last time you went to a dump.

          (Glass bottles are more popular around here, everywhere where people use cars. So everywhere but a part of the cities. We have cheap delivery services that bring whole cases of 12 or 24 bottles, even 6 stories up without an elevator.)

          Where is "here". Because that doesn't sound like the US or Europe. It could sound like Japan, except they recycle plastic well. I have no idea what cheap delivery services w

      • The problem is Americans won't accept wear. In some other nations, the bottles get re-used, but this leads to an old warn look on the bottle which reminds the consumer someone else's lips have curled around this bottle. It's sanitary, but it doesn't have that shiny look Americans demand.

        So, the cost is prohibitive in America because they actually want to recycle rather than reuse.

        • Almost ALL of the "wasp waist" 6 1/.2 oz Coke bottles were refilled. Don't know if they're still in use. They were fascinating because each bottle had a the name of different city molded into the bottom. You could take a trip around the country just by drinking a six pack!

      • Re:easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @04:53PM (#61060292)
        Soda used to come in returnable glass bottles with a deposit included in the sale price. Bottles would be returned to the place you purchased, or any place that sold that brand, where the customer would get the deposit back. The delivery truck delivering new stock would pick up the bottles and they would be returned to the bottling plant, sorted through, cleaned and reused or recycled according to the condition of the bottle. This sorting can easily be done via an AI system now. Same with beer bottles, they used to be returnable as well. We need to go back to this system because glass is 100% recyclable and the color already sorted by the bottling plant it originated from.
        • Soda used to come in returnable glass bottles with a deposit included in the sale price. Bottles would be returned to the place you purchased, or any place that sold that brand, where the customer would get the deposit back. The delivery truck delivering new stock would pick up the bottles and they would be returned to the bottling plant, sorted through, cleaned and reused or recycled according to the condition of the bottle. This sorting can easily be done via an AI system now. Same with beer bottles, they used to be returnable as well. We need to go back to this system because glass is 100% recyclable and the color already sorted by the bottling plant it originated from.

          Yes and this practice is still in place today for 5 gallon spring/purified water. Still seems to work ok. I think we need to think about solutions that might not be convenient. As for Americans not wanting to use "reused" bottles. I see that the water bottles I use are worn, and I know that other people had them in their homes. I'm ok with it.

          It'd be interesting to know how much this "Americans need shiny bottles" problem is lobbying and marketing as opposed to an actual problem.

        • My grandmother used to get her cokes that way. Every couple weeks, she had two weeks supply delivered to her house.

          The only real problem with that idea today is that you need some place to store the bottles, both full and empty. Which can run into a lot of space if you drink a lot of the stuff (Granny went through a case of coke twice a week by herself. Much less what grandaddy and her visitors drank)....

      • Re:easy solution (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @05:30PM (#61060372)

        Here in Finland, pre-PET bottles glass bottles were almost all recycled and have been since 1950s. The current system works like this:

        All bottling companies are members/co-owners of a specific standardising non-profit corporation called PalPa. This corporation is responsible for standardising the bottles with manufacturers and licence holders (i.e. Coca Cola Company and PepsiCo) and return machines in the actual stores as well as systems management. All glass bottles had a price, which would be fully refunded when you return it to said return machines that are present in pretty much any store. They give store credit, which is freely exchangeable for money at the check out if you don't buy anything. Prices are good enough to ensure most of them return to the stores, almost 100% of total are returned if I remember correctly. For example, today with PET bottles prices are 40 eurocents for larger bottles, 20 for smaller bottles, 15 for aluminium cans and 10 for smallest bottles.

        Machines use automation to sort each bottle into a correct pile. From there, bottles are washed while monitored by things like optical and smell sensors, and then re-used. The negative part of this, and one of the reasons why licensors like Coca Cola Company wanted to switch from glass bottles to PET when it became commonplace is that glass bottles actually wear out with time, which makes the product look less attractive. You could see the points in which various machines grab the bottles and where bottles rub against each other on the bottling lines on coke bottles because those points stopped being transparent and instead looked like white unpolished glass on colourless transparent glass Coke bottles.

        We still have the same mechanism for PET bottles, but instead of complex detection mechanisms to see if bottle is still dirty, all PET bottles are just sorted into appropriate piles by return machines, crushed, melted and plastic re-used.

        The system is government-driven in that there's a 51 eurocent tax per litre if bottling corporation doesn't have a recycling mechanism in place. The tax is fully waived if they either create their own recycling system, or join an existing one. Almost everyone just joins Palpa when they come to Finnish market.

        You can read more on the site of this non-profit corporation here:

        https://www.palpa.fi/english/ [palpa.fi]

      • hey can be reused many times and are also easily recycled

        They technically can, but last time I looked, they weren't.

        I don't understand why they aren't reused; but I'm sure a financial incentive to reuse them, (or a financial penalty for not reusing them), would work wonders.

        I may be going all 'get off my lawn' here, but I don't think so. When I was a kid, pop bottles and beer bottles were reused. (Milk bottles too - now there's a blast from the past...) And you could tell they were reused - you could see the wear and tear on them. Why aren't we still reusing bottles? The mantra is 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle', in that order.

        • It was actually economic at the time. My dad was a bottler. I watched as bottles were loaded into this giant washing machine. I think it used lye. Anyway, single use glass is a different type of glass, cheaper than the stuff they used for returnables. Until about 1970? it was less expensive for bottlers to use returnables, but somehow cheap single use glass came out and killed the return bottle method. Cheap cans too. There was still a glass expense even with returnables as there was some breakage and some
        • I think a lot of it is the cost to the *bottler* of using returnable bottles. The trucks use more fuel, the delivery guy has to stay at a customer longer re-loading the empty bottles, the plant needs a bunch of equipment and resources to wash the bottles for re-use as well as a disposal process for the rejects. The whole thing ends up being a lot of added cost that they can jettison with single use products.

          If we were really serious about the bottle question, we would just create standardized returnable b

      • hey can be reused many times and are also easily recycled

        They technically can, but last time I looked, they weren't.

        The point is we used to. Its a known workable solution. It worked for decades. We could do so once again. Even the current green washing half-step isn't a complete solution, the paper still require a plastic liner. The plastic is just being hidden behind paper. The new plastic free solution is still being researched, while the old glass solution is being ignored.

        Well ignored in the US. Mexican bottled Coca Cola in glass bottle and with cane sugar as an ingredient can be purchased.

    • I don't miss the old days when there was broken glass everywhere. My home town was like a cross between Letterkenny and Sunnyvale trailer park. Full of degens and bottle kids.

      • by slazzy ( 864185 )
        Yeah I'm still picking bits of broken glass out of my flat car tires... even though only a few beer bottles are made of glass these days they always find ways into my tire or kids feet walking on the beach.
    • Or drink water instead? Maybe in the future we'll look at drinking brown sugar water in the same way as we now look at smoking.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        Uh huh. Less than a five minute walk from me is a smoke shop, and it's far from the only one. Apparently you need to have an IQ above a certain level before you realize how stupid it is to intentionally inhale the combustion byproducts of any substance for any reasons whatsoever, because people are not only continuing to do that, but there's entire thriving businesses built around that self-destructive behavior.
        The only thing your lungs should be inhaling is clean, fresh air, that is what they were evolved
      • Except they also own the Dasani brand. You know, tap water sold in disposable plastic bottles because Coke hammers people with advertising until they even buy bottled water when there's perfectly good, and practically free, alternatives available.
    • Aren't there people who still do that?

    • Re:easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @03:21PM (#61059994) Journal
      Hear, hear! The Coca-Cola glass bottle is about as iconic as you can get, why not leverage that by going back to it?
      Short of that, what's so wrong with aluminum?
      Why do we need plastic for something so transient as a container for sodapop anyway, especially when we know damned well about the downsides of using it?
      • by eriks ( 31863 )

        Short of that, what's so wrong with aluminum?

        Nothing... except most aluminum cans have a plastic liner.

        • A plastic liner does not interfere with aluminum recycling. It burns off far below the melting point of aluminum.
          • by eriks ( 31863 )

            That's completely true, but making the can initially does use plastic, and while it's a small amount of plastic, compared to a plastic bottle, it's still a consideration when thinking about plastic waste and use of feedstocks.

    • by Kisai ( 213879 )

      I really wish everything would return to glass bottles. Just standardize on two bottle sizes:
      1. 500ml (about 17 fl oz) for individual beverages meant to be consumed in one sitting, opened from the top.
      2. 2000ml (about 68 fl oz) for "family size" beverages meant to be consumed in one day, opened from the bottom.

      Those "bagged wine" systems actually got the right idea originally, gravity feed, so that the liquid could be dispensed from the bottom of the bottle. Another solution is also simple, instead of makin

      • These pre-mixed drinks are often not the best version of the product. The Fountain version is always the best version.

        Uh, no. You may not be old enough to ever have tasted Coke from glass bottles. Whether drunk straight from the bottle or poured over ice, it was ALWAYS better than the best available at any fountain. In my recollection, the same was true of Fanta, Crush, 7UP, ginger ale, root beer, etc. And Coke from the little six-ounce bottles? Heaven!

        I wasn't the only one - back then it was universally recognized that a fountain drink was solidly second-class to a swig from a cold bottle. And that was even before the ice

    • Re:easy solution (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @05:29PM (#61060368) Homepage Journal

      The problem is even with a *perfectly* recyclable material, most of it ends up in landfills. Soda bottles are #1, which along with #2 are the easiest and most profitable plastics to recycle. Even so, over 70% of #1 and #2 plastics end up in the landfill.

      So you really have to factor in the environmental impact of a material in a landfill. Here plastic, although theoretically highly recyclable, is a huge loser. Plastic in a landfill is absolutely horrible. Glass is intermediate; it persists in landfills, but is effectively inert. Paper, of course biodegrades.

      Assuming over half of your containers are going to be landfilled, paper is your best bet, followed by glass. Plastic is only a good choice if you can somehow manage to recycle the vast majority of it. It would help if we could design plastic packaging to be easily recycled, for example not using black plastic, which cannot be sorted by machine and always ends up in a landfill even if it's #1.

      The *best* choice for soda would be to bottle it locally in sterilized, reused bottles. This was pretty common back in the day of 6.5 ounce and 10 ounce coke bottles. I remember buying them in the 1960s with the paint rubbing off from repeated cleanings. This would also address glass's biggest drawback: production, transport, and recycling energy used.

      • Those liners will need plastic softeners. Not the one that got banned, but a near relative where the proof will take decades to come out. If people demand nice white bleached paper - then another deadly pollutant is generated. Finland and Germany seemed to have solved the problem by stiff deposits on packaging, where polluters pay.
    • Beer found the solution hundred of years ago: use glass bottles ! they can be reused many times and are also easily recycled.

      What I came here to say. Yes, reusing glass bottles is the simplest and cleanest form of mass beverage distribution. No , they currently are not being reused, which is why this is proposed as a solution.

      • Glass bottles weigh a lot more than plastic ones, which will increase transportation costs and associated pollution
        • Glass bottles weigh a lot more than plastic ones, which will increase transportation costs and associated pollution

          All electric fleet powered by solar and wind? A giant vacuum tube that runs underground throughout the entire US and is not used for human transportation but for the transport of goods? Local bottling and distribution hubs in close proximity to the largest markets? Crazy thing is that most problems have a solution.

    • Beer found the solution hundred of years ago: use glass bottles ! they can be reused many times and are also easily recycled.

      Glass is fragile and heavy.

      Fragile means you need considerable packing and careful handling to avoid breakage.

      Heavy (+extra packaging) means it costs more (fuel -> carbon) to move it around.

      Aluminium cans were the solution for beer. Just need to break down the myth that canned beer, drinks, etc is poor quality products intended for low brow people. Brewers here have started breaking through that barrier.

      But you can't screw the lid back on a half finished can with the popular current designs so that migh

    • Many places dont like glass because glass is a handy weapon :(
  • They used to manage this by using glass bottles that could be reused. I get my milk and cream in bottles that are reused. They don't need to invent a new thing to achieve that goal.

    • but that's 5 cents more expensive than plastic, and then the weigh it more than 10 times too. Now you're burning megatons of carbon for shipping including two way for recycling

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • but that's 5 cents more expensive than plastic, and then the weigh it more than 10 times too. Now you're burning megatons of carbon for shipping including two way for recycling

        Simple solution. Everyone gets a cow or two for their backyard. No glass to recycle, no transportation issues, no carbon producing vehicles driving around. Problem solved.

        • Re:Glass (Score:5, Funny)

          by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @03:37PM (#61060070)
          Cows tend to be very poor containers for storing carbonated beverages.
          • by Entrope ( 68843 )

            Do carbonated cows eat the same food as the chocolate kind? Can they go to the same vet? This is important for planning my back yard agriculture!

        • by Calydor ( 739835 )

          But cows are blamed for methane releases when burping and farting (not kidding, look it up) so wouldn't that just shift the problem?

          • But cows are blamed for methane releases when burping and farting (not kidding, look it up) so wouldn't that just shift the problem?

            That is bunk science invented by vegans to promote a plant based diet.
            Grass co-evolved with ruminants. Grass likes to be eaten by ruminants and benefits from their shit. A way to get grass to take hold in a desert is to introduce ruminants at the same time.
            The carbon captured and farted by cows is surface carbon, so net zero.
            The time methane spends in the atmosphere is hundreds of times less than that of carbon dioxide. So the warming effect is greatly mitigated compared to CO2, although scientists have bee

  • Why not glass? (Score:5, Informative)

    by tflf ( 4410717 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @03:14PM (#61059950)

    We older types likley remember local bottling plants. Every decent-sized town had at least one bottling soft drinks, and one brewing and bottling beer. Those went away once the bean counters determined there were savings to be had in centralization of production. Which in turn fueled the drive to plastic. Glass was deemed too expensive to transport over long distances, and reducing the financial negatives of centralized production yielded more savings. All savings realized throughout the process, of course, went to the shareholders (as they should)
      Yet, shareholders are not paying for the consequences. A return to glass bottles, and local bottling, would greatly reduce plastic usage, while avoiding the enviromental impact of hauling glass long distances. Of course, such a move would cost more, but, likely cheaper for Coca-Cola, and the others, if the only other alternative was being legally obligated to pay their full share of the cost of handlling, and safely disposing of, post-consumer plastic.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      There are always going to be NIMBYs who will protest something like that being built in their town or city.
      Also the real solution to this problem is for the majority of people to realize that guzzling gallons of sodapop every week is seriously a bad idea and that they should be drinking more water and learning to love it. Anyone who knows anything about proper nutrition will tell you "don't drink your calories"; artificially-sweetened sodapop is just as bad for you but in different ways. If, theoretically,
    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      You forget the energy expenditure involved in making glass bottles, as well as materiel expenditure and stress extra weight and fragility puts on logistics makes for a very large differential in environmental impact.

      Which is not a trivial number of extra CO2 emissions. PET is genuinely environmentally better in terms of CO2 emissions when you look at the whole chain and at the quality of end product for consumers (fragility).

    • by Nkwe ( 604125 )

      We older types likely remember local bottling plants.

      Yep. In addition, at least for Coke bottles, the name of the town was molded into the bottom of the glass. Most of the names on the bottles you would find would be local, but sometimes people returned bottles in other cities, causing a mixing of names. A thing to do was collect bottles from different cities. As a kid I enjoyed looking at the bottom of bottles to see where they originally came from. We had to do something for entertainment before computers and the Internet...

  • by dmay34 ( 6770232 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @03:23PM (#61060004)

    Don't drink Coke.

    For lots and lots of good reasons.

  • that still contains a thin plastic liner

    In theory the layers can be separated and recycled but in practice this will not happen due to how much trouble it is to actually do. The multiple layers thing is why those single serve coffee grounds packs are never recycled.

  • It needs a responsible society, or good incentive to recycle. Otherwise drunks or irresponsible people will litter everything and broken glass is no fun to find in every trail

    • by Dusanyu ( 675778 )

      It needs a responsible society, or good incentive to recycle. Otherwise drunks or irresponsible people will litter everything and broken glass is no fun to find in every trail

      This was not that big of an issue back in the early 80s and before and people are more aware of environmental issues now than they were then. The bottles had a deposit on them that you would only get back if you returned the bottles. Being honest i never understood what they dropped the glass bottles anyway the soda tasted better out of them any way.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I don't see why we go through this retarded exercise of trying to replace a recyclable material like plastic with a non-recyclable material like paper coated with plastic.

    Just use aluminum and glass containers like we used to (back when our efforts were spent on solving actual problems rather than inventing problems to spend money on). Put a 5c deposit on each one and you'll recover 99.9999% of them for recycling.

    • I don't see why we go through this retarded exercise of trying to replace a recyclable material like plastic with a non-recyclable material like paper coated with plastic.

      Because mandatory recycling is socialism, son - and you know how many 'Muricans feel about socialism...

      People should be free to throw everything in the trash, or even on the ground - the way God intended.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • There would be more market to recycle glass of you weren't allowed to use plastic anymore. Plus you don't have to melt it down after each use. The Labatts plant near here receives empties, washes, sorts, sterilizes, and reuses them. They said they average about 10 uses out of each bottle. It's all 100 percent automated.
    • You might think glass would make a great recyclable material, but the energy cost of recycling glass is huge, transportation of a material that heavy (also the quantity of material to make an object is much higher than other materials) combined with the energy cost of melting it makes it a terrible material to use over and over with recycling.

      When it comes to the volumes we're talking about here, care to explain why the hell we would be melting it back down?

      Rinse. Sanitize. Repeat.

      Restaurants learned that trick oh I dunno...decades ago? So did every homeowner who's achieved a level of social status above serving everything out of red Solo cups.

  • ... they will become the #1 paper polluter. It's recyclable you say? So are the plastic bottles. The problem isn't with the product, it's with the people who don't recycle.

    ,

    I mean, it might be a step up because at least paper degrades.

    But because of that, the shelf life on them will be far shorter.

    And that might be problematic. An unopened plastic bottle can be left for weeks or even months and the beverage will still be perfectly fine when the seal is opened.

    I doubt that would hold for paper

  • Paper and plastic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mendax ( 114116 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @04:30PM (#61060242)

    I have just one question. How is a paper bottle recyclable when it has a plastic inner liner? Plastic and paper don't mix well in the recycling process.

    • Re:Paper and plastic (Score:4, Informative)

      by subreality ( 157447 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @06:11PM (#61060480)

      How is a paper bottle recyclable when it has a plastic inner liner?

      Through the magic of RTFA, you can discover:

      "But even if the tests go flawlessly, the real challenge lies in getting rid of plastic altogether. Because the paper cannot come into direct contact with liquids, the plan is to use a plant-based coating on the inside of the bottle."

  • Does anyone remember the 1981 sci-fi movie, Heartbeeps?

    Toss me another one of those Coors in a bag like Capri-Sun, because in the future, beer comes in bags.

    http://ultracondensedmovie.blogspot.com/2009/04/heartbeeps.html [blogspot.com]

  • "Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé have been named the world's top plastic polluters for the third year in a row." What a twisted view of the world. "its drink bottles were the most commonly found item left on beaches, rivers, parks and other litter sites in 51 of the 55 countries that took part in the survey" . Coca-Cola is selling the bottles, not "leaving them on beaches, rivers"... The polluters are the jackasses doing the polluting.
  • THe sinple answer is of course to tax bottles of all forms dollars each. It would also have the positive benefit of encouraging people to stop drinking cola which isnt good for anyones health and drink water from the tap.

    The answer is always simple instead of this bullshit.
  • From the BBC: "Because the paper cannot come into direct contact with liquids, the plan is to use a plant-based coating on the inside of the bottle.
    "It's going to be a bio-based barrier, that's really something minimal, that keeps that food safe, that keeps the product safe at the same time," Mr Michelsen said."

    That's a tricky one there Mr. Coca-Cola: 'plant-based' and 'bio-based' means Plastics that are corn and cane sugar derived, right? Like your 100% plastic Plant-Bottle?
    https://www.coca-colacompany.c. [coca-colacompany.com]

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @12:17AM (#61061442) Homepage

    They suck. It only takes a few minutes before they start disintegrating. If they still can't get paper straws right after all these years, why do they think they can make a paper bottle work?

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