This product is listed on the Greenlist - is it all is says it is? Life Inc produces Revolutionary bottled water with Bottles and Labels made from Plant Sugars. With a Composting profile similar to Craft Paper, Life Bottles are Non Toxic, Recyclable and ultimately eco friendly. Filled in Petone with Artesian Spring water Life is the choice we have all been waiting for. Drink Responsibly, Drink Life! www.lifeinc.co.nz
This info was on a website along with other feedback - not verified - but this person seems to know what they are talking about -
Environmental Biochemistry
Having read all the comments I am a little surprised at how badly informed most of the respondents are. PET (Poly Ethyl Pthalate) certainly has its base materials fossil oil derived - but they could be derived from any number of precursors, such as sunflower oil, though without a breakthrough in catalytic technology, at some cost. PLA (Poly Lactic Acid) is similar to PET, there being minor differences in the polymeric backbone making up the 'plastic' polymer. In many ways it can be compared with Cellophanes, which are chemically re-organised cellulose fibres, themselves very enviornmentally friendly. PLA would almost certainly not be made out of genetically modified cornstarch - for a start, the fermentation of lactose will almost certainly use cane sugar, i.e. pure fructose or sucrose as its base point. Microbes don't generally chomp down all that well on long-chain biopolymers, at least not quickly. Besides, cane sugar is much cheaper than GM corn. And for another this , microbes don't care. Purified lactate is indistinguishable from GM lactate in any case, so the song dance is a knee-jerk greenie-luddite response not worth dignifying an answer to. PET recycling involves chomping the bottle into little bits and pices, and then melting the PET down to make new ones. The latter step will simply burn off the PLA, forming water and a small amount of CO2, which the PET recyclers scrubbers take out anyway, and its even an economic boon, as the enthalphy of formation during PLA combustion actually reduces the energy demands placed on the PET recycler for maintaining operating temperature. Not exactly a lose lose there, then. Incidentally, manufacture of PLA is a lot easier than PET, and as user PLA pointed out correctly, inherently sustainable. Microbial fermenters can make a lot of lactate out of many farm wastes, such as silage, whey, manure, etc. They will also often release usable biogases such as Methane and Ethane. A Bonus would be typically 2.5% v/v Ethyl-alcohol, which can be tapped off for use in medicine, pharmaceutical manufacture and of course a good stiff drink. Incidentally, when I worked at Crop & Food, we did a fair bit of GM hard work for poor and starving people, only to have it wrecked by aforementioned knee-jerk greenie-crypto-communist-luddites. And I am sincere in that label too. I even did real GM at University in Stellenbosch - its not as clear-cut and evil as you might think - most of the time you fail, and have to be even more tightly controlled in your experiments, and its very demanding and expensive to produce a good result, verified by testing - and quite a lot of it too ! Charlie's is at least trying to be environmentally sensitive, its a good place to start, where they have. Oh, and glass is pretty environmentally friendly too....its only sand, sort of.
