Coca-Cola, Ford, Heinz, Nike, and Procter & Gamble Form Col­lab­or­at­ive to Accel­er­ate Devel­op­ment of Products Made Entirely from Plants

The Coca-Cola Com­pany, Ford Motor Com­pany, H.J. Heinz Com­pany, NIKE, Inc. and Procter & Gamble today announced the form­a­tion of the Plant PET Tech­no­logy Col­lab­or­at­ive (PTC), a stra­tegic work­ing group focused on accel­er­at­ing the devel­op­ment and use of 100% plant-based PET mater­i­als and fiber in their products. PET, also known as poly­ethyl­ene tere­ph­thal­ate, is a dur­able, light­weight plastic that is used by all mem­ber com­pan­ies in a vari­ety of products and mater­i­als includ­ing plastic bottles, appar­el, foot­wear and auto­mot­ive fab­ric and car­pet. The col­lab­or­at­ive builds upon the suc­cess of The Coca-Cola Company’s Plant­Bottle™ pack­aging tech­no­logy, which is par­tially made from plants and has demon­strated a lower envir­on­ment­al impact when com­pared to tra­di­tion­al PET plastic bottles. Cur­rently, Heinz licenses the tech­no­logy from Coca-Cola for select Heinz ketch­up bottles in the U.S. and Canada. This new col­lab­or­at­ive was formed to sup­port new tech­no­lo­gies in an effort to evolve today’s mater­i­al that is par­tially made from plants to a solu­tion made entirely from plants. By lever­aging the research and devel­op­ment efforts of the found­ing com­pan­ies, the PTC is tak­ing the lead to affect pos­it­ive change across mul­tiple indus­tries. PTC mem­bers are com­mit­ted to research­ing and devel­op­ing com­mer­cial solu­tions for PET plastic made entirely from plants and will aim to drive the devel­op­ment of com­mon meth­od­o­lo­gies and stand­ards for the use of plant-based plastic includ­ing life cycle ana­lyses and uni­ver­sal ter­min­o­logy. ​“Fossil fuels like oil have sig­ni­fic­ant impacts to the planet’s biod­iversity, cli­mate and oth­er nat­ur­al sys­tems,” said Erin Simon, Seni­or Pro­gram Officer of Pack­aging for World Wild­life Fund (WWF). ​“Sus­tain­ably man­aging our nat­ur­al resources and find­ing altern­at­ives to fossil fuels are both busi­ness and envir­on­ment­al imper­at­ives. It’s encour­aging to see these lead­ing com­pan­ies use their mar­ket influ­ence to reduce depend­ence on pet­ro­leum-based plastics. We hope oth­er com­pan­ies will fol­low their lead.” These lead­ing brand com­pan­ies are mak­ing a com­mit­ment to cham­pi­on and sup­port research, expand know­ledge and accel­er­ate tech­no­logy devel­op­ment to enable com­mer­cially viable, more sus­tain­ably sourced, 100% plant-based PET plastic while redu­cing the use of fossil fuels. PTC mem­ber com­pan­ies look for­ward to work­ing togeth­er to meet each member’s future busi­ness goals and lead the charge toward 100% plant-based mater­i­als. [shortened] Source: Busi­ness Wire