Millennia from now whoever inhabits this planet will call our era “the age of plastics” from the plastic sediment being left everywhere.
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You never know if the bug got in there during the normal bottling process, separate form having been reused. I read some stats once on how much bug and even mice etc. parts are allowed in our food supply. It’s… a lot lol! 
But hey, extra protein!
As an aside: Nobody should really drink carbonated sugar water more often than the rare occasion. It’s absolutely awful for you.
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…or we could just stop drinking their sugar water.
That’ll save on the plastic AND the trees. 
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How is the paper wrapper likely to impact even limited recycling of this bottle?
I’m assuming the paper is relatively firmly attached to the reduced size interior plastic bottle to give it more support than a typical label wrap would.
Any thoughts on doing the reverse? Taking something like a milk carton paper bottle and reinforcing it with a plastic exoskeleton? Is that likely to need more plastic than a bottle it’s trying to replace?
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It would likely make recycling impossible for this construction. You cannot do the reverse with paper but some injection blow molding companies are making a layered PCR bottle that would be most analogous. They are sandwiching layers of PCR (which cannot be food safe) in between layers of virgin PE resin. I’m not sure how you would manufacture a plastic exoskeleton onto a paper carton. It feels like adding a layer of complexity just to greenwash your product.
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Ha! Agreed! My original reaction to this article was “hey – why don’t we all just agree to quit drinking sugary sodas (in single use containers)!” I live in Atlanta, and I can’t stand Coke and Coke products. I occasionally buy a small-bottler soda at the local Ace Hardware (glass bottle), but every time I drink one, I think, “this is too sweet.”
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They said 100% paper bottle is the end goal in the video. The “prototype” does have multiple layers but that’s the prototype, not a final shipping version. Are they green washing by talking about aspirations? Probably, but it has to start somewhere.
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I do like the Mexican Coca Cola w/ sugar cane, in the glass bottle. But I have one maybe… once a year?
I have a few cans of soda in my fridge now. They came back with unused beers (which absolutely did get consumed) from a pre-pandemic party. They must have been in there for 2 years now… I should probably dump the liquid and recycle the cans already!
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Yes, it is green washing to tout this. As I said before, there are several companies that are much further along at making a plastic free solution. This company was chosen and is being touted for marketing reasons. A run of 2,000 bottles isn’t enough to do proper testing (shelf stability, shipping, etc) for the largest beverage manufacturer in the world. In their marketing press release they said that Coke is one of a “small group” of beverage makers… because there are only 2 beverage makers. This is promising change with a miniscule attempt to distract you from the millions of plastic bottles that they fill in a month. What Paboco is trying to do is gimmicky and likely to never have a space in packaging. Even if they can overcome the manufacturing hurdles that are necessary to produce a pressurized paper bottle they have to produce the bottle at scale. The equipment change cost alone would cripple the food industry.
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Also, does it use PFAS like most of the moulded paper clamshells and dishes do?
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Yes. PFAS is widely used to lubricate injection blow molding nozzles. Almost all PET bottles are contaminated with PFAS
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If Coca-Cola simply attached a catheter to my arm and strapped a refillable container to my back, I’d probably go with it. 
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I’m MI-made vintage '74 and it’s been 10 cents for as long as I can remember. That was a pretty large fraction of the total price 30 or 40 years ago!
I remember coming home during college and reflexively mashing a can, like one might do in CO, and getting the riot act from mom because once mashed it couldn’t be returned.
(quick search tells me it was 1976 for MI’s deposit law)
Single use vessels are wasteful anyway. I’m bummed that with the 'rona our local brewpub isn’t filling growlers - just selling you 1L screw top cans to go. At least they’re Al and, being resealable, are kind of reusable at home. Now to find a second use for those wine boxes…
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And, if I recall my recycling class from back in the last century, clear glass pretty much has to be virgin. It takes a ton of additives (arsenic compounds IIRC) to get brown or yellow glass clear and I think green glass will be forever green.
No market but for the purest stuff - like a lot of recyclables. We put our bin out every week and it goes “away” but I always wonder…
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Solution: Just add water and ice in your reusable cup/bottle
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Good thing the packaging won’t change soon. I suspect the company will be getting all kinds of feedback from some of their customers - folks who enjoy finding creative ways to dispose of products…
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it depends on where you live. china stopped accepting american recyclables a couple of years back, and a lot of cities and towns now send their recycling to the landfill or to get burned.
Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill.
a fair bit of recycling – like every plastic item having a recycling icon and number on them – is to help make people feel comfortable about using plastic and not actually “sustainable” or “green” in any way.
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These can hold more than sugar water. And bottled liquids serve other purposes once we can get out out of our home more consistently (like, oh, my last week in Austin!).
You aren’t going to convince the world to discard their traditions of drinking flavoured beverages besides water, nor are you going to convince the world that all beverages need to be premade at home in reusable containers. Lots of folks can do that, and indeed more and more folks do bring reusable containers to work for beverages, but there’s still going to be single-use bottles, and we still need to figure out how to do that properly.
I’m with Clive on the plastic-vs-can issue, and I’ve generally tried to stay on the can side of things when needed, but it would be really nice to have an alternative to fragile & expensive glass or the un-recyclable tetra packs everyone seems to be greenwashing their stuff in lately. Whether or not this initiative is that or not, though, is unclear.
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better stay out of the rain then, and not touch it after washing our hands, and
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