Carlsberg to Develop Wood Fibre Bottle

23 Jan 2015 --- Carlsberg has announced a ground-breaking agreement to develop the world’s first fully biodegradable wood-fiber bottle for beverages.

The announcement was made at the Wasteless Supply at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Carlsberg has initiated a three-year project with packaging company ecoXpac, with the collaboration of Innovation Fund Denmark and the Technical University of Denmark, to develop a biodegradable and biobased bottle made from sustainably sourced wood-fiber, to be known as the “Green Fiber Bottle”.

All materials used in the bottle, including the cap, will be developed using bio-based and biodegradable materials – primarily, sustainably sourced wood-fibers – allowing the bottle to be responsibly degraded.

Commenting on the announcement from Carlsberg HQ in Copenhagen, Andraea Dawson-Shepherd, Senior Vice President for Corporate Affairs, said: “At Carlsberg we are firm believers in the importance of a circular economy in ensuring sustainable future growth and development on our planet, and today’s announcement is excellent news. If the project comes to fruition, as we think it will, it will mark a sea-change in our options for packaging liquids, and will be another important step on our journey towards a circular, zero-waste economy.”

A spokesman for Carlsberg told FoodIngredientsFirst: “At this stage the bottle is very much in the development phase, and the project is for three years, so we hope to have a working product by then. The idea is that it will be a beer bottle, as that is our core product.”

This latest initiative forms part of the Carlsberg Circular Community (CCC), a cooperation between Carlsberg and selected partners whose aim is to pursue a circular, zero-waste economy by using the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) framework when developing and marketing new products. The CCC currently comprises six founding partners, with two new partners, ecoXpac and 1HQ (a global branding agency), announced today. Its goal is to have 15 partners by 2016.
 
CCC achievements in 2014 included:

• C2C certification for Carlsberg and Somersby Cider Rexam cans in the UK

• Primary-stage C2C assessments of six different packaging products

• Launch of a two-year research programme on C2C and LCA (Life-Cycle Assessment) with the Technical University of Denmark