OUTER PLANET 54 PETplanet Insider Vol. 22 No. 11/21 www.petpla.net OUTER PLANET As he sat in a packaging brainstorming meeting in 2019, Ron Khan, PepsiCo Vice President of Packaging for Beverages, knew he had a potentially ground-breaking ambition: paper bottles for beverages. “Many years ago, we wanted to pursue this concept, but couldn’t find the right technology,” recalls Khan, PepsiCo Vice President of Packaging for Beverages. “I knew we needed to make this happen now.” Two years later, Khan can hold in his hand a prototype claimed to be the world’s first fully recyclable paper bottle. Thanks to a partnership with packaging technology company Pulpex Limited and the vision of PepsiCo’s Packaging, R&D and Design teams, the development is poised to add a new packaging solution for products throughout the world. “This bottle offers so many rare opportunities,” Khan says. “It’s sustainably sourced, it’s recyclable, it’s natural - the advantages are huge.” With Pulpex, an R&D collaboration between Diageo (makers of Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff and Guinness) and Pilot Lite (a Venture Management company), and a consortium of global consumer goods companies, PepsiCo is working to develop and scale the fully recyclable paper bottle. Water based coating barrier Versions of the paper bottle concept have been attempted in the past, but they have all required some form of an inner plastic liner that would prevent them from being recycled via mainstream methods. What could make the Pulpex version a game-changer is its base material: sustainable, renewable FSC certified wood pulp. The mixture is blended, moulded and dried to give it strength. Then, to prevent leaks and give an oxygen and moisture barrier, it is treated with a thin, food-grade water-based coating that can go into the paper recycling stream. It is topped off with an also recyclable cap. Khan says, “It adds one more sustainable option to PepsiCo’s portfolio.” Introducing more sustainable packaging, like the Pulpex bottle, is one of the ways PepsiCo is intending to realise its pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) transformation with sustainability at the centre of its business to inspire positive change for the planet and people. A canvas for the design team While Khan’s Packaging team sees the sustainable packaging’s revolutionary potential, the Design team is inspired by the unique canvas a paper bottle offers. Niklas Gustafsson, Design Director at PepsiCo Design and Innovation Studio, worked handin-hand with the Packaging team in the prototype process. His group started by asking questions: “You wonder, what are the limitations? What are the constraints? With every new technology, it’s a lot of trial and error,” Gustafsson explains. The Design team decided to capitalise on its canvas. The material, which Gustafsson says feels a little like the texture of an egg carton, is a wide-open space for printing images and text. The designs they are exploring are bold and direct. All of the branding and images will be printed directly on the bottle rather than requiring a label. One side bears a “recycle” imprint, which Gustafsson sees as a call to action. “I hope we can inspire people, when they see this bottle, that even small acts can create a big impact on the environment,” he says. The next steps Next up: a wide range of laboratory tests to evaluate safety, performance and recyclability before testing with consumers and on the bottling line to evaluate the prototype’s performance. This critical stage will yield important findings and require more design iterations to refine the bottle; all of which will take months. www.pepsico.com A bottle that goes into the paper recycling stream Prototype in pulp While paper bottles previously designed were always covered with an inner polymer layer that made recycling difficult, PepsiCo, through the Pulpex consortium, has come up with a new prototype that is claimed to be recyclable in the paper recycling stream. Through its partnership with Pulpex, the beverage company has embarked on an R&D and design quest that “could change the face of packaging as we know it”.
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