How a great servant became a super villain.
I can’t remember a day that I haven’t seen a PET bottle at least once. They are everywhere. Filled with soft drinks, water, and what not, they decorate the shelves of our shops. Once used, they end up in overfilled trash cans, forgotten in the forests, and washed up on beaches. How come these bottles became so popular? What is the trend of their use, and how can we stop demonising them and fix their negative impact?
The PET bottle
The material PET bottles are made of is Polyethylene terephthalate. The polymer has been patented in 1941 and the product, the PET bottle, was patented in 1973. The bottle has become so popular thanks to the following factors:
- Low costs
- Light weight
- Easy processing
- High strength
- Easy to mould (comes in many shapes)
- Good barrier properties (separates the contents form the environment)
- Transparency
- Stability
- And, in comparison to glass bottles, it is easier handled and transported, resulting in fewer CO2 emissions
Owing to these properties, the consumption of plastic bottles has soared to a whopping 1 million bottles a minute.
The vast majority of these bottles, after being used for a single time, ends up in a landfill, or is thrown away into the world, where they take half a millennium to degrade. Only 7% of the used bottles end up in recycling, but for hygienic reasons, recycled PET cannot be reused in packaging.
Reuse PET bottles with Flo-Bro One
We also believe that PET bottles are a great invention, and the fact that they pollute the earth is not their fault, but that of irresponsible consumers. Just like anything else – overusing is the problem, not using.
That is why we designed Flo-Bro One with the PET bottle in mind. The bottles are light, pressure resistant, resilient, and they are available worldwide. One of the unique features of Flo-Bro One, is that it has a screw thread. This means that you can screw any PET bottle that was once used for a carbonated drink (such as Coke or sparkling water) onto Flo-Bro One. That eliminates the need to buy a special bottle just for Flo-Bro One. The pressure resistance of the bottles also enables some important functions of the travel filter: the air leakage test and backwashing (more about that later).
Are you going to reuse PET bottles with Flo-Bro One? Anything to add? Let us know! Read a great resource on PET here!