Pitched as a water skin, a new bottle created by French packaging manufacturer Sidel provides a lighter alternative to traditional PET bottles. A regular plastic half-litre water bottle weighs 13 – 16 grams. Sidel's NoBottle weighs just 9.9 grams. According to Sidel, "Water is the largest beverage market by volume with 160 billion litres consumed in 2006. It also represents the highest growth sector and is expected to expand by 5.7 percent annually between now and 2010." On that scale, waste reduction of 20-30% adds up.
The innovation was made possible by using a highly flexible type of plastic with shape-memory, which lets the bottle bounce back into shape after being gripped or otherwise compressed. While calling a plastic water bottle eco-friendly smacks of greenwashing, Sidel's NoBottle is definitely is eco-friendlier. The potential waste reduction is significant and offering a lighter bottle — and its story — could boost sales for beverage makers marketing to green-aware consumers. NoBottle will be officially introduced at K 2007, an international trade fair in October. For more packaging innovation, check out push & fizz caps and biodegradable milk jugs.
Website: www.sidel.com
Contact: www.sidel.com/en/contact-us.aspx
Spotted by: Parvez Ahmed
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Plastic bottle pollution is just horrendous, everywhere I run, all I see is discarded plastic water bottles. I no longer buy bottled water as a personal stand against this trashing of our environment, I use a Hydropal instead, which allows me to drink filtered tap water wherever I am, I got my hydropal from www.hydropal.com.au, regards
The concept is good, but with those 3 - 6grams we still produce millions of tons of plastic waste.
Our focus should be more on how to get recycled those millions of tons of plastic and how we can re-use all that waste because according Sidel the demand is growing and the consumption also that also means that we'll have more waste. If we imagine that in most of the countries we will have growth with the plastic waste and we are looking only to the beverage industry, but we have pharmaceutical-,chemical-industry and you name it which are consuming plastic bottles or cans.
So, we should more think about how to avoid drinking from water bottles and buy some containers we can re-use and wash and fill-up every time when we travel or go out of our home.
Let's focus on a healthier environment for ourselves and our children.
If we keep growing with that speed of all waste we will perish in all that waste.
Reducing bottle weight makes sense because it puts less material into the recycling stream, while encouraging manufacturers to be more proactive about their packaging. Remember that plastic does not enter the water supply when it ends up in a landfill. As an inert material, it will not create leachate. Paper, o the other hand, will decompose to an extent in a landfill and the subsequent leachate will be able to enter the water supply if (as most landfill are) the landfill does not have a plastic lining under it to prevent leachate dispersal. Keep recycling your water bottles.
Good concept! Hopefully, most manufacturers will start green-designing their packaging over the next few years.
Agi | July 3, 2007 8:18 PM