Evian Vows 100% Recycled Plastic Use By 2025

Danone’s widely distributed Evian brand of bottle water will have transitioned to 100%-recycled plastic use by 2025, if recent announcements from company execs are to be believed.

At present the company reportedly sources around 25% of the plastic it uses from recycled sources, so there’s quite a lot to be done if the goal is to be achieved, as the transition will be a fairly steep one.

“We want to adopt a circular model where 100% of our plastic bottles will become bottles again. This will enable plastic to evolve from potential waste to become a valuable resource,” explained Evian global brand director Patricia Oliva in an interview with Reuters.

The news follows on a number of other “sounds good but will it actually happen” announcements from other firms — including one we discussed here at CleanTechnica recently from the supermarket chain Iceland in the UK.

Considering the extent of the plastic pollution problem now facing the world, though, perhaps such pledges aren’t actually aggressive enough?

The Reuters coverage provides more: “Evian is teaming up with Loop Industries, which has developed a new technology to transform all types of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic waste into the high-quality plastic Evian requires, to redesign its packaging.”

“Evian will invest a ‘significant’ albeit undisclosed sum of money to reach its goal. The company is also calling for co-operation across industries regarding the issue…In the process Evian currently uses to recycle plastic, ‘PET’ cannot be recycled more than 3 times because the quality suffers. With Loop’s technology, Evian will be able to recycle the plastic again and again, retaining the same quality.”

“Danone is the world’s third-largest bottled water company, and Evian is its marquee label in a portfolio that also has the Badoit and Volvic brands. In September, Evian inaugurated its modernized, carbon-neutral bottling plant in the spa town of Evian-Les-Bains close to Lake Geneva, and Danone aims to make Evian its first, major carbon-neutral mineral water brand by 2020.”

Overall this is pretty good news, but one really just wishes that people would stop buying so many plastic bottles filled with water. A decent water filter, or improvements to municipal services, would be a better approach.

Distributing billions of plastic bottles filled with nothing but water, to be used only once before being tossed…it’s all a bit ridiculous isn’t it?

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