PR Newswire | 28 Apr, 2015
HONG KONG: Ocean Recovery Alliance, a nonprofit organization working to reduce our collective plastic footprint for the improved health of the ocean and our communities, today announced the implementation of its recommendation to Hong Kong based Watsons Water to transform its plastic bottles to a transparent bottle body made of 100% rPET material.
This revolutionary design, and the first in Asia to be 100% rPET, will not only reduce the use and wastage of plastic, but also help cut carbon emissions.
Douglas Woodring, founder of Ocean Recovery Alliance, introduced Watsons Water to the possibility of using 100% rPET, and the reasons why it brings a strong positive influence to sustainability in packaging and promotion of the circular economy, whereby material and products are designed for recycling.
"rPET is a very exciting new product and we need it to scale across the bottling industry so that the billions of bottles used today can be recovered as a resource, and used effectively again, while reducing waste at the same time," said Woodring.
"This has a beneficial impact on our communities, tourism, health, job creation and both marine and terrestrial ecosystems," he added.
rPET can now be used in bottles at much larger volumes, as the technology for production from recycled PET has been perfected. rPET is made through an extensive process of selection, crushing, washing and drying to produce pure, sanitized PET flakes which can be used in food grade packaging.
The production and recycling concept is similar to that of paper. The newly processed rPET material can then be used to produce the bottle body, and allows it to stay within the recycling cycle for use again.
Watsons Water is the largest manufacturer of pure distilled water in the world with production plants located in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and their products are consumed across the Asia-Pacific region, including Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan.
"rPET effectively reduces plastic waste and at the same time avoids production of plastics with fossil fuels," said Mr. Kim Siu, General Manager â Marketing, Watsons Water.
"This truly eliminates waste from the source, reducing the need for virgin material, while also considerably minimizing carbon emissions," he added.
Watsons Water has simultaneously also initiated a "Plastic Bottle 3-Step Recycling Method" to educate the public about the correct recycling procedure, which will help to take Hong Kong towards a greener path of waste reduction.
About Ocean Recovery Alliance
Ocean Recovery Alliance is a 501c3 registered non-profit organization in California, and is a registered charitable organization in Hong Kong. Ocean Recovery Alliance strives to combine forces with business and technology sectors in new ways that will help improve our ocean environment.
Two of the projects within the group were announced at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) and are focused on innovative prevention programs for plastic waste reduction. These includes the Plastic Disclosure Project, and the Global Alert platform, and are the only two global programs which can cut across borders without the need for bans, legislative changes, or taxes, in order to make improvements in plastic waste reduction. The group is one of the first in the world to be working with both the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank on this issue. Last year it launched a report with Trucost and UNEP on "Valuing Plastic, The Business Case for Measuring, Managing and Disclosing Plastic." (Report: http://bit.ly/PDPReport). The group is the organizer of the Plasticity Forum, a unique global conference on plastic innovation, for a world without the waste footprint.
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