| Page 2 of 2 < |
When Packaging Packs a Punch
Seth Goldman, founder and chief executive of Honest Tea at his Bethesda office. Honest Tea makes bottled organic tea using sustainable techniques.
(By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
"The PET is more efficient to move around," Goldman said. The only problem is that the fuel saved by shipping more product on one vehicle is somewhat offset by the petroleum used to make the plastic.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]The primary advantage of glass comes in the recycling: Glass can be made into new glass over and over again. "People feel glass is more natural," Goldman said.
But as the company rapidly expands from natural food stores to places such as Wal-Mart and gas stations, the most dominant form of packaging it will use is plastic. For storage reasons, mainstream, high-volume stores prefer unbreakable materials to glass.
"Whatever the consumer wants, we're going to sell them as long as we believe there is merit," Goldman said.
Honest Tea recently ran into a problem with its newest product: juice-bag drinks for children. (Think Capri Sun, with half the sugar.) The aluminum used by its packager on the bottom of the juice bag made the product unrecyclable. Honest Tea homed in on reuse instead. It formed a program with more than 500 collection sites to gather the bags from children. Honest Tea is paying schools 2 cents for every juice bag sent back to the company.
One of Honest Tea's partners is stitching together the juice bags to make school-supply pouches that will be sold exclusively through a major retailer, which Goldman would not identify. Such is the new circle of life in the green economy: The product comes back, and then it is sold as something else.
The only problem is the pouches probably can't be reused again once they are finished holding pencils. Hello, landfill. "We've made some progress," Goldman said, "but there's no end to this."
