Carlsberg and Coca-Cola back pioneering project to make ‘all-plant’ drinks bottles

Sugars extracted from wheat, with corn and sugarbeets, will be used to produce the plant plastic instead of fossil fuels. Beer and soft drinks could soon be sipped from “all-plant” bottles under new plans to turn sustainably grown crops into plastic in partnership with major beverage makers.

Avantium, a biochemicals company in the Netherlands, hopes to kickstart investment in their pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels.

They have already won the support of beer-maker Carlsberg, which hopes to sell its pilsner in a cardboard bottle lined with an inner layer of plant plastic. are also backing The Dutch project also has the support of Coca-Cola and Danone, which hope to secure the future of their bottled products by tackling the environmental damage caused by plastic pollution and a reliance on fossil fuels.

The photograph (taken by Diego Azubel/EPA) shows a mound of plastic bottles at a recycling plant in Thailand. Around 300 million tonnes of plastic is made every year and most of it is not recycled.

This was taken from an article in the Guardian of Sat 16 May 2020 by Jillian Ambrose. To read more go to https://bit.ly/2WNmMQe