- Food grade sample bottles produced by Consortium – including
Carbios, L’Oréal, Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo and Suntory Beverage &
Food Europe – using breakthrough enzymatic recycling process
The promise of endlessly recycled PET plastic is one step closer
today, as the Consortium – Carbios, L’Oréal, Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo
and Suntory Beverage & Food Europe – announces the successful
production of the world’s first food-grade PET plastic bottles
produced entirely from enzymatically recycled plastic.
This press release features multimedia. View
the full release here:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210623005867/en/
Closing the loop for recycling PET
plastic. Photo credit: Jérôme Pallé (Photo: Business Wire)
Each Consortium company has successfully manufactured sample
bottles – based on Carbios’ enzymatic PET recycling technology –
for some of their leading products including: Biotherm®, Perrier®,
Pepsi Max®** and Orangina®.
Today’s announcement is the culmination of nearly 10 years’
research and development by Carbios to create a new process and
supercharge an enzyme naturally occurring in compost heaps that
normally breaks down leaf membranes of dead plants. By adapting
this enzyme, Carbios has fine-tuned the technology and optimized
this enzyme to break down any kind of PET plastic (regardless of
color or complexity) into its building blocks, which can then be
turned back into like-new, virgin-quality plastic.
Carbios’ patented enzymatic PET recycling process enables a wide
variety of PET plastics to be recycled into virgin quality, food
grade rPET. PET plastics that would otherwise go to waste or be
incinerated, can now be brought back into a continuous circular
system of recycling. And this can be achieved at high speed –
breaking down 97% of plastic in just 16 hours – 10,000 times more
efficient than any biological plastic recycling trial to date
(peer-reviewed article in Nature).
Together, these brands will work to scale this innovation to
help meet the global demand for sustainable packaging solutions. In
September 2021, Carbios will break ground on a demonstration plant,
before launching a 40,000 tons capacity industrial facility, by
2025.
Commenting on the announcement, Carbios’ CEO Jean Claude
Lumaret commented: “In a world first, we have created
food-grade clear bottles from enzymatically recycled colored and
complex plastic with identical properties to virgin PET, and in
partnership with the Consortium, we have proved the viability of
the technology with the world’s leading brands. This is a truly
transformational innovation that could finally fully close the loop
on PET plastic supply globally, so that it never becomes
waste.”
Jacques Playe, L’Oréal’s Global Head of Packaging and Product
Development added: “We have been working with Carbios since
2017 to develop this first bottle made from PET derived from
enzymatic recycling technology, an alternative to mechanical
recycling. We are pleased to announce today the feasibility of
these bottles in a pilot phase and are delighted to be in a
position to create the packaging of the future with our partners.
This is a promising innovation for the years to come that
demonstrates our commitment to bring to market more environmentally
friendly packaging and which is part of a circularity initiative
begun more than 15 years ago”.
Jean-Francois Briois, Head of Packaging Material Science and
Environmental Sustainability Nestlé Waters global R&D
added: “It is very exciting to see that the quality of the
prototype bottles made from colored recycled PET materials is
virtually identical to clear virgin PET. When we reach industrial
scale, this enzymatic recycling technology will enable us to
produce high-quality rPET bottles and help Nestlé Waters in our
journey to boost the circular economy and reduce the use of virgin
plastics.”
Ron Khan, Global VP of Packaging, Beverages, PepsiCo
added: “PepsiCo is committed to building a circular economy to
achieve our vision that packaging never becomes waste. We are
dedicated to reducing the virgin plastic we use and with the
breakthrough Carbios enzymatic recycling technology, we can help
keep valuable material in the circular economy, reduce waste and
take another step toward a truly closed loop system.”
Roberto Vanin, Chief R&D Officer, Suntory Beverage &
Food Europe, added: “The global issue of plastic waste requires
transformational thinking, creative partnerships and innovative
brands coming together to seek out new solutions. Continued
investment in new ways of tackling waste and creating true
circularity such as this ground-breaking technology from Carbios
will be key to Suntory Beverage & Food Europe achieving its
100% sustainable plastic ambition.”
Enzymatic recycling overcomes the issue of degradation in
conventional recycling and can be used on any type of PET plastic.
Because Carbios’ recycling process works under mild conditions, it
could also lower the carbon footprint of PET waste treatment by
saving 30% of CO2 emissions compared to a conventional end of life
mix of incineration and landfill, taking virgin PET production
substitution into account.***
The successful completion of these initial food-grade bottles is
a major milestone in the Consortium’s validation of Carbios’
technology. This partnership is part of a growing trend amongst
brands to collaborate across industries to tackle these global
challenges, working towards a world of circularity, where we limit
the production of virgin plastic.
Carbios will license its technology to PET manufacturers
worldwide, accelerating the global adoption of enzymatic recycling
for all kinds of PET based products.
Notes to Editors
To book interviews or to request further information or images,
please contact lon-carbios@ketchum.com
** Pepsi Max® also known as Pepsi Black or Pepsi Zero Sugar in
other global markets.
*** Preliminary Life Cycle Assessment of Carbios PET recycling
process, 2021
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 a naturally occurring
enzyme 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.
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 was
named one of the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers of
2021.
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/
For more information, please visit:
https://www.suntorybeverageandfood-europe.com
https://www.linkedin.com/company/suntory-beverage-&-food-europe-limited/
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210623005867/en/
Thomas Dockar-Drysdale Lon-carbios@ketchum.com +447713151254
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