PERRIER® Unveils Its First Enzymatically Recycled Bottle Sample Using Carbios Technology
By Weber Shandwick Paris
PERRIER® marks a new milestone in the search for sustainable innovative solutions, unveiling today the first successful production of 100% recycled PET sample bottles using Carbios’ recycling enzymatic process.
Paris, June 24th – PERRIER® is committed in the search of sustainable innovations that could reinvent packaging. To do so, PERRIER® is sourcing new creative solutions, drawing on the expertise of external stakeholders and supporting start-ups that could be game changers in addressing this challenge.
That is why, since April 2019, PERRIER®, as part of Nestlé Waters, has joined a global consortium (along with L’Oréal, Suntory Beverage & Food Europe and PepsiCo) supporting the French green-tech company Carbios, in the development of an innovative enzymatic recycling solution. With this new recycling process, any type of PET plastic could become a new RPET bottle with high quality properties. This ground-breaking solution will contribute to extend the existing recycling loop, allowing more PET plastic to be recycled while maintaining a high-quality performance.
As part of a prototyping stage, first PERRIER® sample bottles (50cl) made with Carbios technology have been produced at the Nestlé’s research and development center for Waters, in France. They are offering an outstanding result, both in terms of quality performance and strength to withstand the pressure of its sparkling water and thus continuing to offer the timeless PERRIER® experience.
Jean-Francois Briois, Head of Packaging Material Science and Environmental Sustainability Nestlé Waters Global R&D noted: “It is very exciting to see that the quality of the sample bottles made from 100% enzymatic recycling process is meeting our quality standards. When we reach industrial scale, this enzymatic recycling technology will enable us to produce fully circular high quality and quantity rPET bottles and help Nestlé Waters in our journey to reduce the use of virgin plastics.”
The production of these samples is another step in our journey towards more sustainable packaging, and is part of PERRIER® overall environmental and collaborative approach with more news to come soon.
Carbios is one of the projects with this open-innovation principle supported by PERRIER®. Following a global call to action, the brand has entered into collaboration in 2019 with three start-ups to source creative solutions and reinvent packaging, from source to end-of-life, owning in parallel the potential to develop a positive social impact.
Two years later, the three projects, each at different stages, are still supported by the PERRIER® teams. The first project, Biotic, based in Kenya, is aiming to develop a bioplastic from agricultural waste, and is currently proceeding to material tests in partnership with Nestlé scientific Team. Flexikeg is aiming to find new ecofriendly ways of delivering water, is currently working with PERRIER® teams to adapt their kegs to specific industrial standards, that could be introduced into a dedicated pilot program. Plastiskul is about plastic’s transformation into useful daily objects. A major milestone is the implementation of the very first Plastiskul mobile micro-factory, in September 2021. PERRIER® team has also worked jointly with them to produce urban furniture made from recycled plastic, that have been provided to Parisians bars and restaurants to support them during post-Covid reopening.
PERRIER® is convinced that this collaborative approach is the key to success in finding solutions to the environmental challenges of tomorrow.
About PERRIER
With a story which started in 1863, in Vergèze, South of France, PERRIER® is a timeless brand recognized by its iconic green bottle. It is known for its refreshing mineral water combined with its unique bursting bubbles.
The brand is committed to sourcing impactful and creative solutions to building a more sustainable world and protecting its natural resources.
For more information, please visit http://www.perrier.com
About Carbios
Carbios, a green biotech company, develops biological and innovative processes to revolutionize the end of life of plastics and textiles.
Through its unique approach of combining enzymes and plastics, Carbios aims to address new consumer expectations and the challenges of a broader energy transition by taking up a major challenge of our time: plastic and textile pollution.
Carbios and L’Oréal founded the consortium in 2017 and were joined in 2019 by Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo and Suntory Beverage & Food Europe.
For more information, please visit http://www.carbios.com/en/
About Enzymatic Recycling
Around 70 million tons of PET plastic is manufactured globally every year – equal to around 20% of all plastic – but through repeated conventional thermomechanical processes, the plastic used in packaging is degraded over time and requires new virgin plastic to retain its quality.
Carbios has successfully hyper-charged naturally occurring enzymes from compost heaps that breaks down leaf membranes of dead plants. PET plastic is made from a string of building blocks also called monomers and this optimized enzyme is super-efficient at cutting the PET plastic into these building blocks: terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol. Those monomers can then be recombined to recreate the PET polymer, at food grade quality, in an infinite, virgin-quality loop.
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