{"id":556,"date":"2011-11-28T19:42:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T19:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/?p=556"},"modified":"2011-11-28T19:42:41","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T19:42:41","slug":"enso-plastics-develops-near-perfect-plastic-bottle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/?p=556","title":{"rendered":"ENSO PLASTICS DEVELOPS NEAR-PERFECT PLASTIC BOTTLE"},"content":{"rendered":"

As featured on Newhope 360;\u00a0Full Article link\u00a0http:\/\/newhope360.com\/packaging\/enso-plastics-develops-near-perfect-plastic-bottle<\/a><\/p>\n

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ENSO Plastics develops near-perfect plastic bottle<\/h1>\n
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Wed, 2011-11-09 13:09<\/div>\n
Functional Ingredients<\/a><\/div>\n
Caren Baginski<\/a><\/div>\n

While many can\u2019t imagine life without bottled water, it wasn\u2019t that long ago\u2014the 1960s, in fact\u2014that plastic bottle production didn\u2019t exist. Today, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the plastic of choice in the beverage industry. According to ENSO Plastics, more than 75 percent of the ubiquitous bottles (and 94 percent of all plastics) end up in landfills. \u201cWe really want to solve the world\u2019s plastic pollution issue,\u201d said President Danny Clark of the Mesa, Ariz.\u2013based company. ENSO is taking advantage of this statistic with its current solution: fully biodegradable and recyclable PET plastic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started, some of the cofounders had experience with bottled water companies. I was one of them,\u201d said Clark. \u201cWe were exposed on a regular basis to the environmental impacts that bottled water has in the environment.\u201d Customers asked the co-founders regularly for alternatives.<\/p>\n

Developing a plastic bottle alternative<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The company spent one and a half years developing its current solution to the 100 billion plastic bottles that are added to landfills each year. To effect change immediately, ENSO chose to implement a solution that could fit into existing manufacturing and end-of-life infrastructures. \u201cPlastics in their raw component are biodegradable, but because we engineer them into these long-chain polymers, microbes can\u2019t break them down as easily,\u201d said Clark. \u201cWe took a concept that\u2019s been around for decades, which is adding certain organic compounds into existing polymers.\u201d These additives provide food for microbes to biodegrade the bottle once it meets the landfill.<\/p>\n

ENSO had to create its own supply chain in order to sell the additive. \u201cBrands were looking for solutions, but manufacturers really weren\u2019t,\u201d he said. So the company found preform manufacturers, bottle blowers and bottle fillers who could complete the life cycle of these PET biodegradable bottles. ENSO Plastics can be found in 12 countries and more than 6,000 retail outlets. In the natural products industry, Project7, Aquamantra and redleaf are three major users of ENSO\u2019s plastic.<\/p>\n

ENSO bottles do not begin to biodegrade until the plastic is placed into a highly microbial environment, so they behave and look exactly like nonbiodegradable PET bottles. It can take anywhere from one to 15 years for a bottle to break down completely, depending on its environment.<\/p>\n

Competing plastics<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The company faces competition in oxo biodegradable and PLA plastic bottles, but both have their downsides and neither biodegrade in landfills. The former is also an additive, but faces degradation from light, heat and moisture; the latter is made from plant starch, and environmentalists argue that fossil fuels used to make these bottles are harsher than traditional plastics\u2014plus, there\u2019s the possibility of GMOs. PLA is recyclable, but not within the current recycling infrastructure.<\/p>\n

ENSO didn\u2019t just stop with bottles, however. \u201cWe\u2019re expanding into other polymers,\u201d said Clark. \u201cWe now have formulations that will work with major types of plastics. Now you can have a complete package that\u2019s biodegradable: the cap, the shrink wrap, the label.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As featured on Newhope 360;\u00a0Full Article link\u00a0http:\/\/newhope360.com\/packaging\/enso-plastics-develops-near-perfect-plastic-bottle ENSO Plastics develops near-perfect plastic bottle Wed, 2011-11-09 13:09 Functional Ingredients Caren Baginski While many can\u2019t imagine life without bottled water, it wasn\u2019t that long ago\u2014the 1960s, in fact\u2014that plastic bottle production didn\u2019t exist. Today, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the plastic of choice in the beverage industry. According […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[737,356,736],"tags":[77,517,194,342,46,310,28,33,452,35,121,1465,161],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biodegradation-2","category-bioplastic","category-environmental-news","tag-biodegradable","tag-biodegradable-additives","tag-biodegradable-plastic","tag-biodegradable-plastics","tag-design","tag-earth-friendly-plastics","tag-enso-additive","tag-environmentally-friendly","tag-going-green","tag-innovation","tag-packaging","tag-plastic-news","tag-plastic-packaging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions\/564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}