Le 1/24/2012 par Jamie's answer
Hello David,

Thank you for this question.

The beverage industry has emerged as a new user of r-PET products in recent years. This is due to recent regulation approving r-PET for food contact. But while Nestlé Waters strongly supports PET recycling, the company has not established any global targets that require the use of r-PET within its own bottles.

Using r-PET saves significant amounts of energy and GHG emissions when compared to virgin PET. While some impacts are generated during the recycling processes, the overall impact is lower when compared to manufacturing virgin PET from crude oil. However, reports from NAPCOR (National Association for PET Container Resources) and PETCORE (PET containers recycling Europe) in 2010 highlight that there is a critical and increasing imbalance between supply and demand in the r-PET market, at the regional and global level.

Due to its low availability, use of r-PET by one industry is currently to the detriment of another. Until a more balanced supply and demand for r-PET is achieved, Nestlé Waters does not consider use of r-PET for its own bottle as an environmental benefit, nor is it a strategic priority. Nevertheless, it can be an appropriate response when there is an identified consumer demand. A few of our brands have recently introduced r-PET bottles: LEVISSIMA in Italy; RESOURCE in the United States (25% r-PET); and MONTCLAIR in Canada (100% r-PET).

Nestlé Waters believes that the best way for it to improve the environmental performance of PET bottles today is to reduce their weight and increase their recycling. Nestlé Waters has reduced the weight of its packaging by nearly 1/5 over between 2005 and 2010 and is also very active in promoting the collection and recycling of PET bottles . For instance in the United States, Nestlé Waters supported Keep America Beautiful’s Great American Clean-up campaign during which 266 million PET bottles were collected for recycling in 2010.