Recently, on a trip to Portland, I picked up a bottle of orange juice at the airport and was delighted to discover that it was a little different from most other bottles I’ve come across. This bottle of Florida’s Natural Orange Juice was made from easy-to-recycle HDPE, high-density polyethylene, plastics recycling number 2. While this isn’t particularly innovative, the labeling is. This label is simply slipped on over the bottle, attached without any adhesive, making it easier to keep the material purity high. This will hopefully keep the HDPE in the technical nutrient stream as long as possible, instead of ‘downcycling’ it into plastic lumber or some otherwise dead-end application.

Sadly, we’re still a long way from being ‘sustainable.’ The bottle is a mix of plastics, the label is most likely made from low-density polyethylene (recycling number 4) and the cap is made from polypropylene (recycling number 5), neither of which are commonly recycled in the US. At least it’s not PVC (watch BLUE VINYL )!

Nevertheless, props to Florida’s Natural (a co-op of growers, btw) for choosing greener packaging!

Popularity: 3% [?]

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See Also: Automated Recycling,Granite Gear’s Green Packaging,Terrible Disposable Fridge,

This entry was posted by Mike Lin on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Design, Environment, Technology, Vestal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.