aquamantra, a bottler of energy enhanced natural spring water based in dana point, ca, investigated the many environmentally friendly bottle alternatives on the market. pla, they discovered, has many challenges to overcome before becoming a viable alternative. &ldquothe reality is that water has to be packaged in a bottle that will not disintegrate on the store shelf, and that&rsquos an issue with the pla bottle,&rdquo said aquamantra founder and president alexandra teklak. &ldquowe investigated the &lsquooxodegradables,&rsquo but there were &lsquobig ifs&rsquo surrounding them, such as an adequate amount of exposure to sunlight for degradation and plastic fragmentation.&rdquofinally, aquamantra found enso bottles llc phoenix, az, the north american distributor of ecopure for the pet bottle market. ecopure is an additive that represents a scientific advancement in biodegradable pet bottles. adding ecopure to pet bottles allows them to biodegrade in aerobic and anaerobic environments and, more important, be recycled along with standard pet bottles because they have the same physical properties as standard pet bottles. pet bottles made with ecopure do not fragment, degrade, or break down from environmental factors such as uv radiaion, moisture, or oxygen.while the pet preforms containing the ecopure additive are cloudy, the resultant bottles have good clarity.this is significant, noted danny clark, president of enso bottles, because manufacturers of traditional pet bottles do not have to invest in new capital equipment to process the bottles with ecopure. the ecopure additive is compatible with all petroleumbased polymers, has been proven through extensive testing to make plastic biodegradable when discarded at a landfill or compost facility, and is perfectly safe for food and drug packaging, meeting all fda requirements. ecopure is manufactured in the usa by biotec environmental llc, at the company&rsquos facility in albuquerque, nm.john barnes, account manager for biotec environmental, confirmed that because the carrier for the additive is pet, any pet bottles containing the ecopure additive are compatible with traditional pet in the recycling stream. &ldquothe specific gravity of the pellets containing the ecopure homogenizes with regular pet so there is no effect on recycling flow nor any degradation of any part of it,&rdquo he said. &ldquoonly about 1 is the ecopure product, so there is no effect on the recycling stream because it&rsquos the same as the master blend.&rdquobarnes stated that the company has not found any resin in which ecopure isn&rsquot compatible, including hdpe, ldpe, pp, and even nylon, making ecopure very versatile and very flexible for use in a wide range of products in which biodegradability is desired as an endofusefullife result. also, unlike some biobased formulas such as pla, the ecopure can withstand temperatures up to&ldquowe&rsquove actually blended ecopure with pp and ps, and have done the astm testing and come up with startling results. polypropylene had a 45 loss of mass of the original sample after just 14 days. with such a high percentage we know it&rsquos more than just the additive material biodegrading,&rdquo said barnes. &rdquoour product is different from other bioplastics&mdashthere&rsquos no starch, no food products&mdashand with the carrier for our product being pet, it reconstitutes the basic elements back into it through a scissoring process allowing it to crack, but that doesn&rsquot happen until it gets to a microbebased environment.&rdquoclark said that one problems with additives that had to be overcome was the cloudiness that occurs within the pet preforms. while the preforms containing ecopure appeared to be cloudy, once blowmolded, the bottles are extremely clear with no cloudiness. &ldquothat&rsquos one of the major benefits of ecopure,&rdquo said clark.enso bottles biodegrade into biogases methane and biomass in anaerobic landfill environments, and enso promotes the use of landfill biogases to be used in creating clean energy.enso&rsquos clark said that he and biotec are still working with the recycling industry to gain their trust in the recyclability of the ecopure in pet bottles. &ldquothe association of postconsumer plastic recyclers apr and the national association for plastic container resources napcor, have a few press releases out stating they&rsquore rather unsure about the technology at this point,&rdquo said clark. &ldquowe&rsquove sent sample materials to the recyclers directly so they can see that there&rsquos no change in the melt flow or quality of the recycled material. a number of them are now ready to accept these bottles into their recycling stream based on the test results that we&rsquove done, and were still in conversation with apr and napcor as they continue looking at it.&rdquopet is the most recycled plastic there is and it&rsquos easy to recycle, barnes noted. &ldquowe tried to target the ecopure toward a market where we thought the product would have a likelihood of ending up in a landfill. the typical landfill is where we want our product to end up, because it promotes biodegradability. still, nothing is better than a product that is both recyclable and biodegradable,&rdquo he stated, adding that he hopes ecopure can eliminate the bad rap that plastics have gotten over the years. &ldquowith our product, within one to five years plastics containing ecopure will all be gone from the waste stream.&rdquo &mdashclare goldsberry
