[greenyes] More on REFPET bottles

["Pat Franklin" <pfranklin@no.address>]

Someone else wrote and said:

Hi Pat,
I am from Europe originally (live in CA) and I can tell you for sure that I
have not seen water or beer being sold in refillable PET bottles. It's
mostly soda pop.

Which one of the two - single-use or refillable systems - is more feasible
or environmentally friendly is an old and very controversial fight.
According to the last I heard they are very close if you balance pros and
cons by energy conservation standards as well as pollution.

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My response was as follows:

Thanks for the note.  An article in Packaging World titled "Carlsberg's
plastic beer bottle adds barrier" reads: Just a few months after introducing
a refillable beer bottle made of polyethylene naphthalate in Denmark (see
Packaging World, Sept. '99, p. 10, or packworld. com/go/ carlsberg),
Copenhagen-based Carlsberg AS has announced its Carlsberg-Tetley subsidiary
is launching a one-way plastic beer bottle in the United Kingdom. Made by
Schmalbach-Lubeca (Manchester, MI), the 500-mL bottle weighs 29 g. It is
co-injection/ stretch blow-molded and consists of "modified" nylon between
two layers of polyethylene terephthalate. Schmalbach-Lubeca isn't saying if
the bottle incorporates an oxygen scavenger.

The url to the article is at
http://www.packworld.com/articles/Departments/10673.html

I also added that it would be difficult to convince me that a plastic
one-way beverage bottle is more environmentally sound than a plastic
beverage bottle that can be refilled dozens of times.  Life cycle analyses
can be tricky.

Cheers to all!

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Patricia Franklin
Executive Director
Container Recycling Institute
1911 N. Fort Myer Drive, Ste. 702
Arlington, VA 22209

TEL:   703.276.9800
FAX:   703.276.9587
EMAIL: pfranklin@no.address

http://www.container-recycling.org
http://www.bottlebill.info
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