Ecologic Brands, a Northern California based start-up that has developed a sustainable and transformative bottle for liquid products.
Their first-of-its-kind bottle is biodegradable, compostable and recyclable and will be on shelves starting today at select Whole Foods stores in Northern California.
A company spokeswoman told SISG the exterior shell of the bottle is made from OCC (old corrugated cardboard) that has been thermoformed into a rigid container using advanced egg carton technology. “It takes an abundantly available resource and gives it another life,” she said.
The inner liner is a thin mono-polymer milk pouch that is recyclable with #4 plastics and easy to adapt to bio plastic innovations.
The first customer testing the new Ecologic bottle is Straus Family Creamery. In a partnership with Straus Family Creamery and Whole Foods Market, Ecologic will test Straus milk in its new bottle in Whole Foods’ Oakland store today January 21, 2010, and will expand to several other San Francisco Bay Area locations.
Straus Family Creamery, based in Marshall, California, is one of the nation’s most respected organic dairies, known for its strong environmental stewardship and loyal consumer base.
“This local pilot will lead to a broader roll out, and ultimately to sustainable packaging for national brands in high volume categories ranging from dairy, juice and wine, to cleaning products and laundry detergents,” said spokeswoman Amy Bonetti Price of Big MouthPR.
Ecologic wants to offer consumers more sustainable choices for their packaging and give them the option to make better choices at the shelf. Other countries are already moving to more sustainable packaging like pouching, re-usable carafes and “bring your own bag” policies at markets.
Ecologic founder Julie Corbett was inspired by milk pouches sold in Canada that are dropped into a re-usable plastic carafe.
It will be interesting to see US consumers reaction to this new packaging from Ecologic – so far efforts to create more sustainable milk packaging modeled after Canadian and European packaging have been largely unsuccessful in the US market.
Ecologic is an Oakland based start-up that has developed a first-of-its kind, sustainable packaging solution designed to solve one of the biggest environmental problems today: the manufacturing and consumption of plastic bottles and plastic coated milk and juice cartons.
The company notes packaging is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases, landfill waste and non-renewable resource consumption.