By Heather Clancy

PepsiCo Beverages Canada has started packaging the 7UP beverage brand in the company’s first bottle in North America to be made from 100 percent recycled PET plastic.
The development is worth noting for a couple of reasons. First, because the plastic has to be “food-grade.” That is, it has to meet the healthy regulatory requirements. Second, the company says that creating 100 percent recycled plastic bottles that are strong enough to deal with the pressure from carbonated soda is more challenging than for liquids that aren’t under pressure.
PepsiCo figures that the introduction of the 7UP EcoGreen Bottle in Canada will help reduce the amount of virgin plastic used by the company by approximately 6 million pounds annually. That amounts to a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a 55 percent reduction in energy consumption compared with the use of traditional materials, according to data that PepsiCo uses from the Association for Post-Consumer Plastic Recyclers.
Said Richard Glover, president of PepsiCo Beverages Canada:
“After three years of research and development, we have cracked the code to commercially develop a soft drink bottle made from 100 percent recycled PET plastic, and Canada has proudly led the way. Consumers want products and packaging that reflects their desire to protect the environment, and PepsiCo is committed to delivering on that with this kind of world-class innovation.”
The new bottles will start to show up across all 7UP and Diet 7UP package sizes across Canada starting in August. The innovation took an investment of $1 million across the PepsiCo manufacturing facilities in Canada that will be used to make them, although the company said that will not translate into a price increase.
For an idea of how these bottles compare to the others you might see from PepsiCo, consider that the company uses an average of 10 percent of recycled PET in most of its major soft drink brands and bottles across the United States and Canada. It introduced the 100 percent PET recycled bottle in March 2011.
Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.
Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll. When she’s not hunting for a great green story, she’s singing a cappella or scuba-diving with her husband, Joe.
She writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.
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(Source: www.smartplanet.com )