Whilst the Cool Change bottle doesn’t look much different from any other bottle, the difference lies in the ingredients of the bottle. Instead of using oil products, our bottle is made from plants.
PLA - What is it?
Derived from 100% annually renewable resources such as plants, the PLA technology is Ingeo™ natural plastic, made from NatureWorks’ biopolymer.
Benefits of Ingeo™ PLA include:
- Ingredients are plants which are an 100% annually renewable resource.
- The production of Ingeo™ PLA bottles consumes 67% less fossil fuels resulting in 90% less greenhouse gas emissions than what is required to produce a similar sized PET bottle. On top of that we offset our greenhouse gas emissions, making our production process certified carbon neutral.
- 100% recyclable, Ingeo™ PLA bottles can potentially be melted down and remade into virgin quality resin to produce a 100% recycled bottle.
- The potential to be commercially composted. Under commercial composting conditions (in high heat (58-60 degrees Celsius) + high humidity (90%+) conditions) the Ingeo™ PLA bottle can compost down within 80 days. Once broken down the nutrients remaining can be put back into the ground as a fertiliser and mulch.
- Because oil and water don’t mix, the natural spring water contained within the Ingeo™ PLA bottle remains pure, is friendly to your health and the Planet.
You now have a choice…
Option 1. PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) bottle derived from crude oil and produced using energy created from fossil fuels.
or
Option 2. Ingeo™ PLA (Polylactic Acid) bottle made from renewable resource (plant sugars) using renewable energy sources to produce the resin required to make the bottles & the labels (at this stage our bottle tops are not made from PLA but we’re working on getting them derived from potato starch and should have them on our bottles by early 2009). The production process (including the bottle blowing and water bottling) is certified carbon neutral by the Carbon Reduction Institute. Note: bottle cap is currently not Ingeo™ PLA , we are currently working an updated bottle cap that will be developed from plant sugars, this will be in place late 2008.
Cool Change Natural Spring Water will be available in Australia wide from October through cafes, eateries and organic food stores.
How to Dispose
1. Reuse - If you’re a bottle reuser, make sure the bottle is clean and the fluid source is trustworthy. Note: as the bottle is made from plants, hot and humid conditions can make the bottle soft, so keep that in mind when you’re storing me.
2. Recycle - Once consumed, the bottle can be put into your domestic recycling bin. Until we have more people using PLA bottles, our Ingeo™ bottle will be recycled with other plastics. The technology used to sort through the existing waste stream (near infra red technology) can be used to separate Ingeo™ PLA bottles from PET bottles. Independent tests on this modern sorting equipment proves that PLA can be identified in a mixed waste plastic stream with good accuracy. And so, as the volume of Ingeo™ bottles in use gets larger, it will be worth not only removing the Ingeo™ in from other plastics, but also recycling it by itself.
Recycled into new bottles - Unlike PET, The Ingeo™ bottle is 100% recyclable to be remade into water bottles. This process is called Chemical Hydrolysis and is basically using steam to turn the bottles back into the original fermentation product – lactic acid. The resulting resin from this lactic acid is virgin quality and can be remade into water bottles. Because of this, Ingeo™ is infinitely recyclable: it can be made into another product) again and again, whereas oil-based competitors are typically “down-cycled” into products that of diminishing value e.g. industrial goods and ultimately destined for landfill.
Commercial Composting - Ingeo™ PLA can compost in 10 to 80 days in commercial composting conditions. Commercial composting conditions are; high heat (58-60 degrees Celsius) and high humidity (90%+) conditions. It’s worth noting that most domestic composting don’t reach these extreme conditions. Once the bottle is composted, the nutrient compost can be put back into the ground. As it stands currently in Australia, infrastructure for widespread waste management through commercial composting is only available in South Australia. Our ultimate goal is to get commercial composting available nation wide. For more information about this visit our ‘the idea’ page.
What happens if the bottle goes to landfill?
Don’t feel bad. It won’t breakdown creating methane. Under a well managed landfill, the Ingeo™ PLA won’t have the temperature, humidity or microorganism to breakdown. The bottle will maintain it’s stability and will be effectively sequestering the atmospheric CO2 that was originally used to grow the plant, eventually it will breakdown and the carbon will then be stored within the landfill site unable to reach the atmosphere. Our long term hope is that organics (food wastes, and plant matter) is diverted from landfill and instead is composted and fed back into farms and the ‘land’ as a natural fertilizer returning valuable nutrients back into the soil.
For more indepth information please download our Freqently Asked Environmental Questions information sheet or the NatureWorks Ingeo™ Life Cycle Assessment from our media page.