Leave it to an 8 year-old. Specifically, the 8 year-old son of Jim Warner, managing director of design consultancy Brandimage, who took one look at a plastic bottle his dad had helped create and said, “Oh. You make trash.”
Once the sting of that nasty little unvarnished truth wore off, Warner set to work to make not just a better bottle, but a better approach to bottling altogether. And with the 360 Paper Bottle, he may have hit the eco-ball straight out of the cradle-to-cradle design park.
Once the sting of that nasty little unvarnished truth wore off, Warner set to work to make not just a better bottle, but a better approach to bottling altogether. And with the 360 Paper Bottle, he may have hit the eco-ball straight out of the cradle-to-cradle design park.
The bottle, introduced as a spec project to generate some buzz for the firm in 2008, generated an “extreme response,” says Warner. Hundreds of calls winnowed down a handful of companies and organizations (details intentionally sketchy at this point) who have partnered with Brandimage to bring the bottles to market, possibly as early as sometime in 2010.
Among the 360′s many virtues:
Among the 360′s many virtues:
- Not actually made out of paper but pulp, which can be sourced from almost anything fibrous such as bamboo, sugar cane or banana leaves.
- Local production plants can source local materials, generating local jobs and commerce.
- A shorter distribution chain means less transport-generated CO2
- The bottles designed to be become their own multi-unit packaging: a six-pack literally sticks together.
- A radical re-think of the bottle top: paper & with handy hook
- Bottles can be shipped flat to be filled closer to their final destination, reducing shipping costs
- They are compost-friendly
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SAVES BIRDS & OCEANS
Perhaps the biggest virtue of all is simply that they are not plastic. They do not require a special recycling facility for processing – they can be tossed in a compost pile. They do not release Bisphenol A (BPA) as a carcinogenic byproduct. They will not contribute to Great Pacific Garbage Patch or any of the other spirals of death swirling poison in the Earth’s oceans. They will not kill innocent albatross chicks by bloating their bellies with bottle caps, their parents having been fooled by the colorful faux food as they fished in once fertile waters.
Perhaps the biggest virtue of all is simply that they are not plastic. They do not require a special recycling facility for processing – they can be tossed in a compost pile. They do not release Bisphenol A (BPA) as a carcinogenic byproduct. They will not contribute to Great Pacific Garbage Patch or any of the other spirals of death swirling poison in the Earth’s oceans. They will not kill innocent albatross chicks by bloating their bellies with bottle caps, their parents having been fooled by the colorful faux food as they fished in once fertile waters.
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So, Mr. Warner…What else does that insightful son of yours have to say?
RELATED
- Agalita Marine Research Foundation (website)
- “Captain Charles Moore on the seas of plastic” (TED talk – video below)
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- “We’re Poisoned! – FDA is killing us *Plastics* Bisphenol A” – an interview with Dr. Frederick vom Saal, Edocrine Disruptors Group, University of Missouri (video below)
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- Midway Journey: (documentary project blog – Chris Jordan, Manuel Maqueda, Bill Weaver, Jan Vozenilek, Victoria Sloan Jordan)
