Bottle-Carton Hybrid Offers Sustainable Plastic Alternative

JUST Water in Tetra Top packaging.

In an effort to provide more sustainable packaging, Tetra Pak has announced a new version of its Tetra Top package, now with a cap and top made from plant-based materials. The new hybrid bottle-carton packaging takes the type of water receptacle that consumers are familiar with and makes it more environmentally friendly.

"Our goal is to increase the content of renewable materials in all of our packages," Larine Urbina, communications manager at Tetra Pak, explains.

The paperboard carton looks exactly like the original version, but the cap and top are now made from renewable high-density polyethylene (HDPE) derived from sugarcane, which has been used on other caps and packaging, but never on a carton bottle. This change has increased the Tetra Top package's total renewable content to 82%, up from 53% when the HDPE used in the cap and top were created from fossil fuel-based materials.

The new packaging will be released initially as part of a field test with JUST Water, a company providing 100% spring water that believes in "designing with more renewable materials over fossil fuels … [to lower] the carbon footprint of our packaging while protecting the product inside," according to the company's website. Drew Fitzgerald, co-founder of JUST Water was visiting Italy when he came across a milk jug created by Tetra Pak that wasn't available in the U.S. packaging market at the time. Since JUST launched in 2015, it had been using the Tetra Top carton bottle, but wanted to provide consumers with a more sustainable option.

As the entire supply chain continues to seek out options that are practical, affordable and limit the use of plastics that can cause pollution during production and the product's lifecycle, Tetra Pak has seen an increase in interest from brands and consumers in packaging derived from renewable resources.

“Packages made from renewable materials are not only good for the environment, but also offer our customers a competitive advantage,” says Charles Brand, executive vice president of product management and commercial operations at Tetra Pak, in a press release. “Consumers choose JUST water because they appreciate its brand values, and want this to be reflected in the whole user experience. We are pleased to have come up with a package that is aligned with this focus without compromising convenience and functionality.”

The bio-based plastics, in particular, are a popular alternative in the industry, Urbina says.

"We've seen a lot of success with our bio-based caps on our other packaging products … that's something we're seeing people asking about a lot more," she says.

At a recent event testing the new bottles, Urbina says that the feedback was positive surrounding the new materials and design.

"People were completely amazed that it was a water bottle but it was paper. … It's the functionality you would expect from a bottle — it looks and feels like a bottle — but it is a carton," she says.

The JUST Water bottles were created using water-based inks that were applied directly to the paperboard. Converters can print on the raw material before turning it into the packaging, enabling 360-degrees of printed space.

The packaging is expected to be commercially available to other companies by the end of 2016.