A durable, lightweight plastic that came of age in the late &lsquo70s and early &lsquo80s to contain carbonate soft drinks, traditional petroleumbased pet contains monoethylene glycol, or meg, which accounts for up to 30 percent by weight of a container. The remaining 70 percent of the total mass is purified terephthalic acid, or pta. &ldquoour packaging innovation teams are working on technology to develop pta from plants,&rdquo said cocacola last year about its efforts. & ldquobut it&rsquos complicated science and we expect it will be a few more years before we have a commercial breakthrough.&rdquo now, though, through a strategic working group called the plant pet technology collaborative ptc, cocacola, ford motor, h.j. Heinz, nike and procter & gamble seek to accelerate the timeline for development and use of 100percent plantbased pet materials and fiber in their products.
As explained in an earlyjune announcement released jointly by the five companies, the collaborative builds upon the success of cocacola&rsquos trademarked plantbottle packaging technology.
Made with plantbased meg, which replaces the fossilfuelderived glycol, the technology demonstrates a lower environmental impact than traditional pet plastic bottles. Currently, heinz licenses the technology from cocacola for select heinz ketchup bottles sold in the u.s. And canada. But, as cocacola emphasizes in its release, the collaborative organization was formed to support new technologies to evolve today&rsquos partialplant pet material into a full plantbased solution.
And as the company says, the collaborative seeks to accomplish this by leveraging researchanddevelopment efforts of the five founding companies. That leveraging aims to reduce the use of fossil fuels and increase recyclability of the respective companies&rsquo products.
