This morning, from the main stage at SB’16 Copenhagen, Carlsberg’s Sustainability Director, Simon Hoffmeyer Boas, unveiled the brewer’s latest design for its Green Fiber Bottle.
As part of the work of the Carlsberg Circular Community — formed in 2014 with the goal of creating packaging that meets the rigorous standards of the Cradle to Cradle® design framework — Carlsberg kicked off the development project in 2015 with Danish packaging company EcoXpac to develop a beer bottle made from sustainably sourced wood fiber. The first prototype of a fiber-based bottle was revealed in January 2015 by Professor Flemming Besenbacher, Chairman of the Carlsberg Foundation, at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The new design of the beer bottle was developed with Carlsberg’s partners in the Carlsberg Circular Community, as well as CP+B Copenhagen and Kilo, a Danish industrial design studio. The prototype, which has been prepared based on the distinctive Carlsberg design, shows how the bottle might look when it hits the market.
“The new bottle is a great milestone in the project, as having a physical prototype makes it easier for us to explain the new packaging format to consumers and colleagues,” Hoffmeyer said in a statement. “I think the new bottle looks great and shows how we can use innovation and design to help shape products for a better tomorrow.”
“The bottle has been created with input from some of the leading packaging specialists in the world, who are very excited to participate in the project. Though we still have technical challenges to overcome, we're on track on the project,” says Håkon Langen, Carlsberg’s Packaging Innovation Director.
Carlsberg says fibers for the Green Fiber Bottle will come from responsibly managed sources, with trees replanted at the same rate that they are harvested. While the bottle will degrade into environmentally non-harmful materials if discarded randomly, the intention is for it to be recycled as part of a proper waste-management system, just like the majority of bottles and cans already on the market.
The three-year project is supported by Innovation Fund Denmark and the Technical University of Denmark. The Green Fiber Bottle is scheduled to be test-launched in a pilot market in 2018.
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Published Sep 28, 2016 10am EDT / 7am PDT / 3pm BST / 4pm CEST