A refillable bottle that contains 25 per cent post-consumer rPET has been developed by plastic bottle manufacturer Petainer.
The bottle has the same performance characteristics as a refillable bottle made entirely from virgin material.
Petainer group chief executive Nigel Pritchard said: “This is a very exciting development. Refillable bottles are already the beverage packing system with on of the lowest environmental footprints. This massive advance in the use of recycled material makes refillable bottles even more ‘eco-nomic’.
“They are eco-friendly because they use up to 90 per cent less virgin material per filling. This performance is improved even further by the introduction of post-consumer recyclate which means that the bottles now require less energy and other resources to manufacture.
“They are also economic in the traditional sense because the environmental benefits translate into lower costs. As the cost of PET resins inexorably increases, the economics of refillable bottles using recycled material become even more compelling.
“We believe these new containers have a good claim to be considered one of the world’s most sustainable forms of beverage packaging. This will become even more the case as commodity resources become scarcer, costs rise and environmental impacts come to the fore.”
The idea of these refillable bottles is that they will be returned to the retailer by the consumer once emptied, and will then be washed and refilled.
Petainer currently manufactures one-way bottles that need to be recycled after use, including a 100 per cent recycled material bottle.
