Innovative Sustainable Beverage Packaging
A bag in a bottle? This should have been the cover story for this month’s Packaging Digest. The debate about which packaging strikes the greatest balance between environmental concerns and customer convenience got more interesting with Ecologic’s bag/bottle hybrid.
A plastic bag inside a paper bottle
“In principal, Ecologic is a bag-in-bottle with the consumer interface being almost identical to standard packaging,” says Julie Corbett, founder and CEO of Ecologic Brands, Inc. “The Ecologic bottle offers enhanced functionality [over bag-in-box formats] as it is easier to pour, hold and grip.”
The bottle is a biodegradable, paper-based, rigid container that houses a plastic bag inside. Once in a landfill the paper container breaks down quickly leaving the much smaller plastic bag. What I love about this packaging is that it addresses some of the concerns that bottlers and machinery manufacturers have had for years in that weaker and/or flexible packaging reduces the ability to fill, pack, and ship the products efficiently, requiring more overall energy usage on packaging lines. I haven’t seen any of these bottles yet in person, but if this trend continues I think it could eventually see widespread adoption.
Tags: bag, bottle, paper, plastic, sustainability