{"id":815,"date":"2010-08-17T17:52:16","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ensobottles.com\/blog\/?p=815"},"modified":"2010-08-17T17:52:16","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:52:16","slug":"east-valley-tribute-com-interviews-enso-bottles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/?p=815","title":{"rendered":"East Valley Tribute.com Interviews ENSO Bottles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> For more than a year, the marriage of Danny and Teresa Clark of Mesa was dominated by trying to change the way products are packaged.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was 100 percent, 24-hour-a-day thinking,\u201d Teresa Clark said. \u201cWe did research to the end of the Internet. There were a lot of sleepless nights, but what kept us going was the passion and drive to know that something had to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is a recyclable, fully biodegradable plastic bottle produced by ENSO Bottles, the Clarks\u2019 Mesa-based company. The bottles \u2014 a collaborative effort of chemists, microbiologists and manufacturers, among others \u2014 are primarily used by a handful of water companies.<\/p>\n

The Clarks hope to expand the bottles\u2019 reach to such products as soda, shampoo, medicine and wine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t invent anything ourselves directly,\u201d Danny Clark said. \u201cWe worked with manufacturers and compounders. We were able to tweak it and bring it together to develop a product that is not only recyclable, but breaks down naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The process of developing organic materials and synthetic polymers to bond with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) \u2014 the resin typically used in plastic containers \u2014 took about 18 months.<\/p>\n

Danny Clark said bottles that use starch-based and oxo-degradable plastic break down in compost environments, but not landfills, where most nonrecycled containers end up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a lot of trial and error,\u201d Danny Clark said. \u201cWe tried this material and that material and ran the biodegration tests. We would do additional research to find compounds to mix together better. The issue was getting the right stuff to mix together from a chemistry perspective. There were dozens of mixtures to go through, and making it biodegradable was probably the easy part. The hard part was getting it to mix with the plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the water companies using ENSO bottles are Balance, Aquamantra, Ecoviva and Project 7.<\/p>\n

Martin Chalk, co-founder of Balance Water, said his company spent more than a year looking for a suitable bottle before choosing the ENSO product in November.<\/p>\n

The production is still in its infancy, Chalk said, and there are challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottles are clear, but not as clear as regular PET,\u201d Chalk said. \u201cIt can vary from batch to batch. You have to get the temperature just right when you blow the bottle forms. It\u2019s still a learning curve, but over time, as biodegradable bottles become more popular, the machinery should be able to cope with it better.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a new printing-press process \u2014 you have to have a master technician get it just right. Soon, it will become more foolproof.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recyclable, biodegradable bottle costs about two cents more to produce.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more steps,\u201d Teresa Clark said. \u201cBut I haven\u2019t heard anyone say they were against paying 90 cents for a better bottle as opposed to 88.\u201d<\/p>\n

View original article: http:\/\/www.eastvalleytribune.com\/business\/article_1f642176-aa40-11df-941e-001cc4c03286.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For more than a year, the marriage of Danny and Teresa Clark of Mesa was dominated by trying to change the way products are packaged. \u201cIt was 100 percent, 24-hour-a-day thinking,\u201d Teresa Clark said. \u201cWe did research to the end of the Internet. There were a lot of sleepless nights, but what kept us going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-blogs","category-latest-news","tag-enso-bottles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}