Truth About Bottled Water

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Light from a water bottle could brighten millions of poor homes (w/ video)

From: http://www.physorg.com/

Screenshot of a solar bottle bulb from the video below.
Image credit: Isang Litrong Liwanag

As simple as it sounds, a one-liter plastic bottle filled with purified water and some bleach could serve as a light bulb for some of the millions of people who live without electricity. Originally developed by MIT students, the "solar bottle bulb" is now being distributed by the MyShelter Foundation to homes throughout the Philippines. The foundation’s goal is to use this alternative source of daylight to brighten one million homes in the country by 2012.

In order to make the water bottles "light up," holes are cut in the metal roofs of homes and a bottle is placed and sealed into each hole so that its lower half emerges from the ceiling. The clear water disperses the light in all directions through refraction, which can provide a luminosity that is equivalent to a 55-watt electric light bulb, according to the MyShelter Foundation. The bleach prevents mold growth so that the bulbs can last for up to five years.

Although the solar bottle bulb only works during the day, it can meet the needs of many of the people in Manila, Philippines, and other cities, where the homes are so close together that very little sunlight can enter through the windows. As a result, the homes are dark even during the day.

Residents describe the difference that the solar bottle bulb has made. Video credit: Isang Litrong Liwanag

The solar bottle bulbs’ advantages include sustainability and safety; compared with candles or faulty electrical connections, they aren’t a fire hazard. The bulbs are also inexpensive to make and install, and of course have no operating costs while in use.

The MyShelter Foundation is promoting the solar bottle bulbs as the Isang Litrong Liwanag ("A Liter of Light") project. In Manila, the city government paid for the bulbs while the foundation is training residents on how to make and install them.

via: Treehugger
© 2011 PhysOrg.com

Pepsi Ups Ante on Plant-Based Bottles with 100% Non-Plastic Bottle

By Jonathan Bardelline
From: http://www.greenbiz.com/

PURCHASE, NY — PepsiCo announced a response to Coca-Cola's PlantBottle, but unlike Coke's bottle, which is only 30 percent plant-based at the time, Pepsi says its will be completely derived from plants.
Pepsi will make its bottles out of switch grass, pine bark and corn husks, and like with Coke's PlantBottle, they're using natural materials to make PET plastic, so it can be recycled along with their current petroleum-based plastic bottles.

The beverage giant hopes to also use orange and potato peels, oat hulls and other agricultural byproducts from its Tropicana, Quaker and other operations in the future to make the bottles.
Pepsi will do a pilot run of the plant-based bottles in 2012, followed by commercialization based on the results of the test run.

While Coca-Cola beat Pepsi to putting out drinks in bottles made from plants first, Pepsi has the chance to put out the first recyclable bottle derived entirely from plants by a major company.
Coca-Cola's PlantBottles, which are also being used for Heinz ketchup and Odwalla juices, are still 70 percent petroleum-based. Scott Vitters, the company's global director of sustainable packaging, wrote in a GreenBiz.com post last year:

Our PlantBottle packaging is made by converting natural sugars found in plants into a key ingredient for making PET plastic. For those who want the technical specifics, we've innovated a way to develop plant-based MEG, a key component in PET plastic. PlantBottle is up to 30 percent plant-based because MEG is 30 percent of the total composition of PET plastic by weight. We still have more work to do to crack the code on a plant-based TA, which is the other 70 percent of PET plastic, but we know it is feasible.

_{Pepsi bottles - CC license by Clean Wal-Mart (Flickr)}

New Wine In Old Bottles: The Greenest Way To Drink

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto

from: http://www.treehugger.com/

Images via Inhabitat

Whenever there is a discussion about wine packaging, TreeHugger comes down on the side of local and refillable. We return often to TreeHugger Emeritus Ruben Anderson's article in the Tyee: New Wine in Old Bottles, where he notes that in France, wine bottles are refilled an average of eight times. Now they even have computerized wine dispensers where you can fill your own jugs with vin de table for about two bucks a litre.

It is much like filling up your car at the self-service gas station, and at 1.45 euros per litre, it is about the same price. (gas in France is 1.41 euros per litre). It isn't a new idea; Dr. Vino writes:

Astrid Terzian introduced this concept that hearkens back to a bygone era when wine would arrive in Paris shops in tonneaux and consumers would bring their own flagons to fill. But today, Terzian says, she started this scheme in fall 2008 to fill a niche, tapping into two key themes, environmental awareness and the economy.

Dr. Vino also suggests that the system is coming to the States within the year. But every time we have this discussion, people note that in the litigious USA, somebody will get sick and sue. There are people trying to do refillable bottles in America; Pend d'Oreille Winery sells wine in a refillable 1.5 litre jug. Wines and Vines writes:

The economic benefits have sweetened the environmental proposition that initially inspired the program. Since a local market for glass recyclables doesn't exist in Sandpoint, bottles were typically reintegrated with solid waste and sent to an Oregon landfill. Pend d'Oreille's program helps reduce that waste stream.

In British Columbia a lot of wineries are looking at refillable bottles.

Preliminary economic models developed by Dr. Ian Stuart of the Faculty of Management at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan in Kelowna pegged the per-bottle savings of the program at 46 cents (Canadian) per bottle (based on an annual flow of 840,000 bottles through the system). Smaller wineries typically pay between 85 cents to $1.20 Canadian (CA$1 = US$0.94) per new bottle.

In Michigan, you can bring your own bottles to Left Foot Charleys.

It's cheaper and better for the environment, obviously the greenest alternative. But what do we get peddled as green?

Boxes aren't Green

We noted earlier Ruben's wonderful article, where he questioned the green-ness of boxed wine, writing

While looking for wine in refilled bottles I had the misfortune to see one of those shrill displays of wine in Tetra Paks; this crap is being flogged as a "Green Solution." It's junk like this that drives me to the liquor store in the first place. Tetra Paks are here to save us because they weigh less, so less climate-changing diesel fuel is required to lug them across the ocean from Australia. Dear God, where to start?

He does go on, read the rest in Which Is Greener, Wine Bottle or Box? Neither.

TreeHugger Jenna, who does life cycle analyses for her day job, had a close look at boxed wine and concluded that it did have a lower carbon footprint than bottled.

Overall, the study concludes that the paperboard systems have the lowest total energy as well as the lowest greenhouse gas emissions; the glass systems have the highest total energy as well as the highest greenhouse gas emissions.

More in Hitting the Bottle or Hitting the Box? The Debate Continues

But as was noted in a post on the recycling of Tetra Pak,

Green is reusable. Green is refillable. Green is not disposable and downcylable, for the lucky 20% of Americans who have access to it, and landfill for the 80% who don't. Tetra Pak is the most elaborate greenwashing scheme ever, and they are doing a very good job of it.

(although I must point out that Pablo disagrees with me in his Defense of Tetrapak)

Others are trying to reduce their impact by putting wine in pouches, which are then put in a cardboard box. It is popular in Europe but has only six percent of the market in the USA, as everyone evidently thinks it is only for plonk suitable for rubbies. Alan Dufrêne, a wine consultant, blames the industry. "Don't put low quality wine in bag-in-box packaging," Dufrêne told wine makers. "It will only reduce its appeal." More in Which Is Greener, Wine Bottle or Box? Depends on the Box

PET Bottles were developed for the British market, so that yobs wouldn't kill each other at football games. Their claim is that they are lighter and smaller, taking less energy to ship. The bottles " are 88 percent lighter than glass bottles, and use less energy to manufacture than glass bottles. The lightweight plastic bottles also reduce distribution emissions." John isn't convinced and writes Marks & Spencer Delivers Wine in Plastic Bottles, but Is It Greener?

April wrote about Yealands Estate wine, packed in PET, noting that "its Full Circle sauvignon blanc bottles are 89% lighter than 750ml glass bottles, which means they generate 54% less greenhouse gas emissions and use nearly 20% less energy to produce than glass. " Ways to Wine: From Bottle to Box, Back to Bottle

April is also fond of wine in pouches, noting that they are a twentieth of the weight of glass, and quotes a study:

Even if 100% of wine bottles were recycled and 0% of wine pouches were recycled (because by the way, the mixed-material pouches are NOT currently recyclable) pouches would still have less environmental impact and contribute less waste.

It is a difficult issue. As Matt calculated in his post Ship or Truck Transport Makes All the Difference in Wine's Carbon Footprint , it doesn't really take a lot of energy to move wine by ship around the world. In fact, driving to the wine store probably has a bigger footprint than shipping the bottle from New Zealand. But it still takes a lot of energy to make a bottle or a box, energy that would be saved if we could refill our own jugs and bottles right from the tank. But notwithstanding Dr. Vino's optimism, I don't expect to see it any time soon.

A Machine That Turns Plastic Back Into Oil

Posted by Alec_Liu

From: http://motherboard.tv/

Plastic causes a trifecta of problems. We’re running out of places to dump our non-biodegradable plastic waste and it’s clogging up our oceans. Burning plastic releases tons of CO2 into the atmosphere contributing to global warming. And to make the stuff, it soaks up 7% of our annual petroleum use, an in demand, diminishing resource.

Akinori Ito, the CEO of Blest, a Japanese company, has somewhat of a panacea. If plastic is just oil, why don’t we simply turn it back into what it was, he pondered. So the guy made a machine to do it. His solution is safe, eco-friendly and efficient.

“If we burn the plastic, we generate toxins and a large amount of CO2. If we convert it into oil, we save CO2 and at the same time increase people’s awareness about the value of plastic garbage,” Ito told Our World 2.0.

Blest produces the machines in various sizes suitable for more industrial purposes or simple home use. There are already 60 in use across Japan at farms, fisheries, and small factories with some beginning to ship overseas for the environmentally conscious and curious abroad.

One kilogram of plastic waste produces almost a liter of oil while using about 1 kilowatt of electricity.

“To make a machine that anyone can use is my dream,” Ito says. “The home is the oil field of the future.”

Pepsi's Dream Machine Aims to Make Recycling a Slam Dunk

By GreenBiz Staff
From: http://www.greenbiz.com/

PURCHASE, NY — With the goal of boosting the nation's beverage-container recycling rate by nearly 50 percent in the coming years, PepsiCo and Waste Management have launched a multi-year partnership to bring reverse vending machines to the masses.

The Dream Machines program will bring as many as 3,000 recycling machines to high-traffic areas, where individuals can recycle their cans and bottles and earn reward points or donate cash to charities.

In launching the partnership, the companies have set a goal of increasing the amount of bottles and cans that get recycled by a significant amount: With only 34 percent of non-alcoholic bottles and 25 percent of PET plastic bottles recycled annually, Pepsi and Waste Management aim to boost that number to 50 percent through increased recycling at reverse vending machines like the Dream Machines.

Here's how the system works, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal:

The machine itself is like a vending machine in reverse. A video screen plays advertising and informational videos, which are updated wirelessly and tailored to each site. A consumer first touches the screen and follows instructions, either to swipe a key fob to track rewards points or to defer registration for later, if at all.

Next the user scans the product barcode, and places the plastic or aluminum bottle (no glass yet) in the proper chute. The machine then spits out a receipt with reward points good for travel or movie tickets, or other benefits, such as coupons for Pepsi products.

The bin does not crush containers, as the sponsors' research says consumers don't like the noise. Each kiosk can hold about 300 bottles or cans. [...] The person responsible for emptying the machine gets an alert via email when the machine is nearly full. The recyclables are picked up by Waste Management.

For more details about the Dream Machine program, as well as finding a reverse vending machine, visit Greenopolis.com. For more on the benefits of reverse vending machines, read "Beyond the Blue Bin: The Next Generation of Recycling" and "On-Site Recycling Facilities Can Provide a Win-Win-Win."

Eco Coke Bottle design

From: http://designfabulous.blogspot.com/
By: Andrew Kim - 김승현 designfabulous@gmail.com

My midterm project for my semester 2, freshman product design studio II class at CCS.

Renders / Graphics: Adobe Photoshop

Mock-Up: dense foam

*Edit: Here are the sketches from this project:

Posted by Andrew Kim

Coke to launch bottle partly derived from plants

* Coke to test "plantbottle" in North America this year

* Says up to 30 pct of new bottle comes from plant material

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co said on Thursday it has developed a new plastic bottle that is partly made from sugar cane and molasses, raising the bar in the battle for the most environmentally friendly packaging.

Coke will test the new bottle in North America with Dasani bottled water and certain carbonated brands later this year. The test will expand to the vitaminwater brand in 2010.

Up to 30 percent of the new "plantbottle" will be made from a material derived from sugar cane and molasses, which is a by-product of sugar production, Coke said.

Plastic bottles are made from a non-renewable, petroleum-derived substance.

Many large food and drink makers are looking to make their packages smaller and more environmentally friendly, especially since retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc introduced a "packaging scorecard" to rate suppliers on their ability to cut waste and conserve resources by reducing packaging.

Rival beverage makers PepsiCo Inc and Nestle are also introducing lighter-weight bottles that use less plastic.

(Reporting by Martinne Geller; Editing by Gary Hill)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Sears to Sell Eco-Friendly Men's Suits Made of Recycled Plastic Bottles

By GreenerDesign Staff

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- The U.S. arm of Teijin Fibers Limited is partnering with Sears and the maker of the retailer's private label apparel to fashion men's suits from a blend of wool and polyester fibers that are produced from recycled PET bottles.


With $175 for a jacket and $75 for a pair of pants, customers can buy a suit that is billed as being fully machine washable and dryable, and made from fabric that is 54 percent recycled polyester, 42 percent wool and 4 percent spandex.

The jackets and slacks are to be sold as separates under Sears' Covington Perfect brand, manufactured by Israeli firm Bagir Group Ltd. and are expected to hit the racks in U.S. stores in May. It takes about 25 2-liter polyethylene terephthalate bottles to produce enough polyester fiber to make a suit.

N.I. Teijin Shoji Inc. of New York announced the firms' plans on Tuesday. N.I. Teijin Shoji is a part of the high tech textile company that belongs to Japan's Teijin Group, a multinational corporation embracing 160 firms with a long history in the chemical industry.

Established in 1918, Teijin was the first company in Japan to produce rayon yarn. The company started its polyester fibers business in 1958 and has since positioned itself as a leading manufacturer of synthetic fibers.

Teijin's Eco-A-Wear textiles are being marketed as an environmentally friendly fabric for use in making suits and other apparel that appeal to business professionals who are interested in a "new generation of green fashion."

The manufacturing process does not rely on petroleum, says the company. It provides the simplified diagram below to illustrate how the recycled polyester fiber Teijin calls Ecopet is made and then spun with wool to create the Eco-A-Wear fabric.

Recovered PET bottles are milled into flakes, which are then granulated into pellets. The pellets are turned into the fiber that is blended with wool yarn to make the fabric.

Teijin first made a splash in producing textiles from recycled materials in partnership with Patagonia, when the two companies launched the Common Threads Recycling Program in 2005.

The first product involved in garment-to-garment recycling through Common Threads was Capilene (long) underwear. The process developed by Teijin enabled recycled Capilene to be used as raw material, which when substituted for petroleum resulted in new garments that were produced using 76 percent less energy and releasing 42 percent less carbon dioxide.

The Eco-A-Wear fabric was in development for two years before coming to market. Its promoters say it wears and drapes well for an easy-to-care-for look that is comfortable and, unlike polyester of bygone days, breathes.

Polyester suits for men made their appearance in the 1970s with generously cut two-piece leisure suits for the weekend and suburban set and fitted three-piece ensembles -- bell-bottomed slacks, vests and jackets -- that sold as separates for disco wear.

One of the more ubiquitous brands was Angels Flight, which was priced so that buyers could get a three-piece suit and a shirt or accessories for about $110. The suits came in a range of colors -- the expected black, brown, gray, tan, taupe and navy as well as the hues that marked the period: russet, rust, white and powder blue.

The pair below, which had been available through www.dressthatman.com, went for $21 in stores and was sold for $159.99, according to the website featuring men's vintage clothing.

A sign of the '70s. Source: www.dressthatman.com

Buddhist temple built out of one million beer bottles

A temple has been built by monks in northeast Thailand who used over a million recycled beer bottles to make the walls and roof.

Buddhist monks have recycled over one million used bottles to build their temple in Khun Han, Thailand near the Cambodian border Photo: BRONEK KAMINSKI/BARCROFT MEDIA

Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew, also known as Wat Lan Kuad or 'the Temple of a Million Bottles', is in Sisaket province near the Cambodian border, 400 miles from the capital Bangkok.

The Buddhist monks began collecting bottles in 1984 and they collected so many that they decided to use them as a building material.

They encouraged the local authorities to send them more and they have now created a complex of around 20 buildings using the beer bottles, comprising the main temple over a lake, crematorium, prayer rooms, a hall, water tower, tourist bathrooms and several small bungalows raised off the ground which serve as monks quarters.

The bottles do not lose their colour, provide good lighting and are easy to clean, the men say.

A concrete core is used to strengthen the building and the green bottles are Heineken and the brown ones are the Thai beer Chang.

The monks are so eco-friendly that the mosaics of Buddha are created with recycled beer bottle caps.

Altogether there are about 1.5 million recycled bottles in the temple, and the monks at the temple are intending to reuse even more.

Abbot San Kataboonyo said: "The more bottles we get, the more buildings we make."

The beer bottle temple is now on an approved list of eco-friendly sight-seeing tours in southeast Asia.

PET Project: Coke's Big Recycling Plant

By Marc Gunther,

Roughly 75 percent of plastic soda and water bottles end up in landfills, by some estimates. What a waste. We could argue about whether to blame lazy consumers, governments that fail to promote recycling, or the beverage industry. We could debate whether bottle bills will solve the problem. (They won't, by themselves.) We could try to persuade people to give up bottled water. (They won't.) Or we could look for market-based solutions, and see if they have the potential to scale.

That's what the The Coca-Cola Co. is doing. This week, Coke stages a grand opening for the world's largest bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, S.C. (The plant's been running at less than full capacity for months.) The facility is a $60 million joint venture of Coke and the United Resource Recovery Corp. (URRC), which calls itself the world leader in transforming waste bottles into new ones. URRC has a patented process for recyling food and beverage containers made of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET.

The plant will have the capacity, when fully operational, to produce 100 million pounds of recycled PET plastic chips—enough to produce 2 billion 20-ounce bottles of Coke or Dasani or whatever.

It's a small step toward the goal of sustainable consumption—the idea the we can buy and consume stuff in a ways that don't degrade the environment or create waste. Coke has said that it ultimately wants to recycle or reuse all of its plastic bottles and cans.

I spoke earlier today with Scott Vitters, the director of sustainable packaging for Coke. Scott is passionate about the environment, albeit in a geeky way, and he's proud of the plant, which has been in the works for years.

"It's an important milestone for us," he said.

The best thing about the plant is that it is intended to make money for Coke and URRC. That means that the project can be duplicated elsewhere.

Here's how it will work, as explained by Scott: A separate recycling company, led by Coca-Cola Enteprises, the world's biggest Coke bottler (don't ask me to explain the interconnected Coke system), will recover PET from a geographic area stretching from the northeast to Florida. The used PET bottles will come from its own manufacturing system, from government recycling centers and from high-profile venues like NASCAR events, college football stadiums and the House of Representatives. As the "official recycler" at the Democratic national convention in Denver, Coca Cola Recycling even collected waste from the arena known as the Pepsi Center. "All that material went back into our bottles—gleefully," Scott says.

Another source for feedstock is a Coke-backed startup called RecycleBank, which rewards consumers who recycle more and throw away less. VC firm Kleiner Perkins is also an investor in Recycle Bank.

Getting enough feedstock into the plant is crucial to its success. "That traditionally has been a major hurdle to recycling," Scott said.

The plant will produce a plastic chip, which will be sold to yet another Coke-backed company. Most of the chips will be refashioned into plastic bottles. Coke also makes T-shirts, tote bags, fleeces and other stuff from recycled PET, mostly as a way to encourage consumers to recycle and burnish its own image.

How will the new plant make money? "Explaining the economics around recycling is always an adventure," Scott said. "You have to keep in mind different things. One is the evolution of the technology. This is about the fourth generation of recycling technology, and earlier generations were costly and environmentally ineffective. Second is the question of feedstocks, and how much they cost. Third is the cost of virgin PET. Today, that's dropping."

In other words, it's hard to know today whether the investment will pay off. "The driver for this program was environmental," Scott said. "It's not going to make anyone wildly wealthy. But we're looking to turn a profit, long term."

That's good news, for obvious reasons. If the Spartanburg plant makes money, more will be built. Right now, there's a need for a similar plant in the Midwest. Plastic bottles that are recycled near the west coast wind up in China, of all places, since it's cheap to send them over there on container ships that have delivered Chinese imports to west coast ports.

None of this is truly sustainable. Not even close. Think of the trucks, powered by gasoline, moving all of those bottles around. I didn't think to ask Scott how the plant is is powered, but chances are it's operated by electricity made by burning coal.

But Coca-Cola, to its credit, is doing its part to solve a big and needless waste problem. Now we need governments to do more to promote curbside recycling–maybe with "pay as you throw" programs, that charge wasteful people more money. And, of course, we need consumers to think twice before throwing a bottle in the trash or, worse, by the side of the road.

Thai Temple Built From One Million Recycled Bottles

by Evelyn Lee

The Wat Pa Maha Chedio Kaew temple has found a way to bottle-up Nirvana, literally. The temple, which sits in Thailand’s Sisaket province, roughly 370 miles northeast of Bangkok is made of more than a million recycled glass bottles. True to its nickname, “Wat Lan Kuad” or “Temple of Million Bottles” features glass bottles throughout the premises of the temple, including the crematorium, surrounding shelters, and yes – even the toilets. There’s an estimated 1.5 million recycled bottles built into the temple, and as you might have guessed, they are committed to recycling more. After all, the more bottles they get, the more buildings they are able to construct.

The bottle-collection-turned-building started in 1984, when the monks used them to decorate their shelters. The shiny building material attracted more people to donate more bottles, until eventually they had enough to build the temple standing today. Bottle caps are also integrated as decorative mosaic murals. Going beyond use of glass as a sustainable building material, the bottle bricks don’t fade, let natural light into the space and are surprisingly easy to maintain. So if you’re looking to find Nirvana in a bottle, you might want to consider making a stop at the Wat Pa Maha Kaew Temple.

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Via NotCot