It is only a matter of time before Coca-Cola products in North America will be packaged in plant-based containers. The mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) derived from sugarcane and molasses have already started popping up in Europe and Coca-Cola officials say the new PlantBottle will be ready for a North American debut at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. And if Coca-Cola is able to carry out its strategic vision of finding other sources of waste-plant material to make MEG from, it may not be long before most Coke products are packaged entirely in 100% plant-based, recyclable bottles.

“Today, we are taking a major step along our sustainable packaging journey as The Coca-Cola Company becomes the first-to-market with a recyclable PET plastic bottle made partially from plants,” said said Muhtar Kent, Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, in a release.

Coca-Cola says the new packaging helps reduce the company’s dependence on petroleum and reduce its carbon footprint, siting preliminary research that indicates a lifecycle carbon advantage for the plant-based bottling product over traditional petroleum-based bottles. The company’s long-term vision is to “grow the business, not the carbon,” said Cees van Dongan of Coke’s global Environment, Health & Safety Council at a European bioplastics conference, eventually reaching a net balance of zero waste generated by the company’s packaging. Coke says it will continue to monitor and collect lifecycle data about the production of its PlantBottle and post findings when they become available. Coke bottles from sugarcane today and from wood chips tomorrow.

PlantBottle packaging is currently made through a process that turns sugar cane and molasses, a by-product of sugar production, into a key component for PET plastic. Coke says the sugar cane waste being used for its bottle production comes from predominantly rain-fed crops that were processed into ethanol, not refined sugar and that they are working with the World Wildlife Fund to promote sustainable sugarcane production in Brazil and elsewhere.

The PlantBottle packaging in the North American market will consist of up to 30% plant materials from sugarcane production in Brazil. The remainder of the material will be traditional PET plastic, some proportion of which will likely be post-consumer content. But regional variations in PET consistency cause the percentage of plant material in the bottles to vary from one country to the next.

For example, Denmark uses recycled content in its PlantBottle packaging. The combined plant-based and recycled content makes up 65 percent of the material, with 50 percent coming from recycled material and 15 percent from plant-based material. But the proportion of PET in bottles may eventually be moot as the company’s long term goal is to use non-food, plant-based waste, such as wood chips or wheat stalks, to produce recyclable PET plastic bottles. The current supply stock also relies on byproducts from the Brazilian ethanol industry. Coca-Cola sees the sugarcane as adequate for the time being, but not part of a long term viable strategy.

Said Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent of the future of bottling: “Our vision is to continue innovating to achieve a bottle that is made with 100 percent plant-waste material while remaining completely recyclable.”

And whether you drink Coke or Dasani water in a bottle is not the point. The point is that huge corporations like Coca-Cola that move millions of pounds of product can make or break entire industries based on their material sourcing. And we may be witnessing a huge shift in the bottling industry that, on its face, appears to be a good thing.

Reprinted with permission from EarthandIndustry.com