Today Coca-Cola let it out in public that they, along with Eco Plastics Ltd. will build a plastic recycling plant in Lincolnshire, England. For this, they plan to invest $24 million of which $5 million will be by Eco Plastics Ltd. This is the second time Coca-Cola has hit the news in a short period of time. Earlier they sealed a major deal with Heinz who bought 30% plant-based plastic from the cola giant.
SodaStream is another cola maker that has shown interest towards using eco-friendly technology. They have decided to use bottles that will decompose in 5 years in landfills to transport their flavored syrups. Before this, waste industry experts say that normal bottles take more than 450 years before they are completely decomposed.
Experts say cola companies, recyclers, additives businesses, and non-petroleum plastic makers will have to make much more investments than what has been made, since they have contributed heavily in degrading the planet.
SodaStream will call its new bottles as “Bio Bottles” which they designed in-house and will now manufacture on their own in a traditional bottle manufacturing company. They have used an additive from Bio-Tec Environmental LLC, a company from Albuquerque, New Mexico. These additives will be used in the making of all components of the bottle like caps, bottles, shrink wrap so that the whole bottle is easily decomposed.
A staggering figure of 12.53 million tones is the amount of packaging material and plastic that is dumped in the U.S. landfills. This figure was given by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences conducted a research that gives out the fact that most ordinary plastics used by common man can cause potential damage to the endocrine system of the body which may lead to adverse psychological effects.