Coca-Cola and PepsiCo's plant-based bottles still damage the environment.

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News and commentary about environmental issues.By Amy WesterveltPosted Tuesday, June 14, 2011, at 1:54 PM ET

Is plant-based plastic better?First came the press releases: In March, PepsiCo touted the "World's First 100 Percent Plant-Based, Renewably Sourced PET Bottle," prompting CocaCola to stammer, "Odwalla First to Market with up to 100 Percent PlantBottle? Packaging." The subsequent headlines bumped the hype up a notch: "Pepsi bottles: no more plastic" (Christian Science Monitor), "Pepsi Ups Ante on Plant-Based Bottles with 100% Non-Plastic Bottle" (GreenBiz), "Coca Cola?designing bottles from recycled plastic and plant by-product" (Guardian). Last month, Coca-Cola released a commercial for its Dasani-brand bottled water arguing that its partlyplant-based packaging is "designed to make a difference":

But despite all the buzz, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo's plant-based bottles are still very much plastic.The companies have merely replaced the fossil fuels (petroleum and natural gas) traditionally used to make their plastic bottles with ethanol from renewable sources (plant waste in Pepsi's case and Brazilian sugar cane in Coke's). Though these initial inputs come from renewable, lower-carbon sources, the resulting plastics are chemically identical to the polyethylene terepthalate, or PET,and high-density polyethylene, or HDPE, that regular plastic bottles are made of?a fact the companies acknowledge. And once the inputs become plastic, they carry all the same environmental impacts as plastic made from fossil fuels: They don't biodegrade, they pollute the world's oceans and soils, and still leach potentially harmful chemicals into our food.

"They're just using plants to make the same polymers you find in other plastics. It has zero effect on plastic pollution," says Marcus Eriksen, a marine biologist who co-founded the non-profit 5 Gyres a few years ago to study ocean plasticization in areas like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Eriksen and his crew just finished exploring the world's five major oceanic gyres (slow-moving currents that create massive whirlpools where plastic can accumulate). They've found "plastic soup"?water thick with tiny bits of plastic?in all five. Eriksen's team and other researchers have also found larger chunks of plastic on the various islands scattered throughout the gyres, and in the bellies of dead birds, fish, and animals who fill themselves up with plastic bits that they mistake for fish and eventually die because they can't digest the stuff.

Likewise, plastic?plant-based or otherwise?harms human health. The dangers of chemical additives commonly used in plastic, such as pthalates and bisphenol A, have been widely publicized; the two have been linked to obesity, autism, and various forms of cancer.

"Some bioplastics formulations use the same types of additives as petroleum or natural gas-based plastics," acknowledges Melissa Hockstad, a vice president at SPI, a trade association for the industry. In other words, plant plastics are not necessarily free of BPA and pthalates. There's no way to know whether a particular plant-based plastic bottle includes these chemicals, since all plastic "recipes" are protected as trade secrets. But since traditional PET and HDPE manufacturers tend to use them to produce the right level of pliability and clarity, there's a very good chance that plant-based versions of PET and HDPE contain them, too. Hockstad says "some companies have been working on the development of bio-based" alternatives. But the key phrase is "working on the development of," as in, those additives don't exist yet and may never.

Amy Westervelt is a freelance environmental reporter based in Oakland, Calif.

Photograph of plastic bottles by iStockphoto/Thinkstock.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=93923d939d200bdd265336c28690e9af

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