- PulPac unveils a fiber-molded bottle cap to compete with conventional plastic caps.
- The innovation builds on efforts to develop a complete paper bottle, including enclosures.
The quest for a paper bottle has been underway for quite some time. The appeal is obvious: raw materials for molded fiber can be obtained more sustainably and with less environmental impact than metal or glass. Sustainable forestry is already well established for other packaging materials, such as paper and cardboard. Metal, however, requires mining and smelting, harming the surrounding areas and communities, while glass uses a tremendous amount of energy and produces greenhouse gas emissions.
And plastic? Well, that also requires extraction of oil, and recyclability is possible, but even if plastic makes it that far, and so little of it does, plastic quality degrades with each recycling process, to the point where it can’t be used in some applications, like food packaging.
