Archive for NEEPS North East Eco-friendly People's Site
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wildgarlic
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Milk, and more, in a greenbottlehttp://www.greenbottle.com/about_us/
| Quote: | Why we need GreenBottle
The UK uses over 5 million tonnes of plastic each year. All the 2 litre plastic milk bottles used in the UK each year would fill the Albert Hall 50 times over. Most plastic is not biodegradable and is made from oil - a depleting and expensive resource. Prices of plastic bottles have increased substantially with the increase in the price of oil. Plastic milk bottles are mostly made from High Density Polyethylene ("HDPE") and require an estimated 500 years to decompose and account for 130,000 tonnes of landfill waste in the UK each year. When the cap is left on, the disposed plastic bottle takes up a large volume of space in the landfill and is difficult to crush. Laminated cardboard cartons that are used as containers for milk and other non-carbonated drinks also pose environmental problems because they are made with plastic coated lamination and are extremely slow to biodegrade. Some laminated containers also contain aluminium elements and other materials which prevent their disposal into the general recycling schemes.
GreenBottle has developed a much greener solution which can replace plastic bottles. The outer shell is made from recycled paper which can then be further recycled, or if left it will just decompose within a matter of weeks. The inner liner, which takes up less than 0.5% of the space of a plastic bottle if dumped in a landfill, prevents liquid from contaminating the paper outer.
The GreenBottle consumes about a third of the energy required to make a plastic bottle and has a Carbon Footprint that is 48% lower than plastic. GreenBottles fit easily into the existing supply chain.
GreenBottles can be used for milk, juices, smoothies, yoghurt drinks, squashes and concentrates, water, shampoos, hand creams, liquid detergents, engine oils and probably many more liquids that we don't even know about yet. |
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Julie
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Could it eventually replace the tetrapak, I wonder?
It doesn't say if the greenbottle liner can be recycled though..... 
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jaydee67
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| Quote: | When I did some research I found that the pulping technology used in milk bottles was well developed and designed for making high volumes. The problem was how to make the bottle waterproof - here the solution was fairly straight forward - a bag.
If the bag were made loose inside the bottle then the consumer could remove the bag, once the milk had been used, and dispose of the bag and the cardboard in separate recycling streams. If the consumer does not recycle then the whole bottle will crush flat at the landfill and over time the cardboard will decompose leaving the small residue of the bag. |
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Fia
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I never quite understood where the fabulously recyclable glass milk bottles went to.....
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Ina
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| Fia wrote: | | I never quite understood where the fabulously recyclable glass milk bottles went to..... |
I think the disadvantages of those were the weight (higher transport costs), and the massive costs of cleaning (basically, each bottle has to be cleaned as if somebody had used it for something toxic - because somebody may have, before returning it). Saying that, I still think they would be better than what we have now.
Those "green bottles" sound like the yoghurt pots that some companies have been using for a while (Yeovalley, for example).
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Julie
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Thanks Jaydee, I just read the article on view and didn't notice the link :oops:
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Smooth Hound
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apart from anything, it tastes better out of a bottle, a nice cool bottle with the cream at the top 
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Fia
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Aye, SH, it seems to be all homogenised now sadly. It may save the breakfast rush to get the top of the milk, but it ain't the same.
grumpy old woman mode off
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