In an Australian beverage industry first, Emma & Tom's is poised to move to bottles made from 100 per cent recycled Australian polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) for its whole fruit smoothie range.
The company's move to rPET is the result of a partnership with Visy, which has invested $40M in a new recycling plant that recently opened in Smithfield, NSW.
According to Visy, the new plant is expected to recycle 34,000 tonnes of quality recycled plastic per annum back into rPET & rHDPE products.
The rPET technology creates a food grade plastic that, once used, can be recycled again. The result of this, according to Visy, is that less plastic is imported into the country and less plastic sent offshore for recycling.
Anthony Pratt, CEO and global chairman of Visy, said manufacturing new products from recycled materials required less energy and water than using raw materials.
“It makes sense that our focus should be on managing our environmental impact for a better world,” Pratt said.
Emma Welsh, co-founder of Emma & Tom’s, said consumers might notice that the bottles have a slightly darker tinge, which is a result of the recycling process and has no effect on the food grade sanitised plastic.
“We estimate our move to rPET will help save more than a million plastic bottles from being produced each year,” she said.
Welsh noted that Emma & Tom’s was also the first Australian company to utilise stevia leaf extract in its Organic Sparkling and Quencher beverage ranges, and was one of the first to use Chia seeds on a commercial scale, by basing its new Life Bar snack range on the super food.
