Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff
AT&T made the Dow Jones Sustainability Index North America for a second consecutive year by reducing the amount of plastic in its accessory packaging, investing in clean energy and encouraging community volunteerism among its employees. The new packaging is made up of 30 percent bioplastic—a plant-based material harvested from sugarcane. AT&T is the latest in a list of prominent brand names to recalibrate products to include bioplastic, such as Coca-Cola’s 2009 introduction of the PlantBottle, and the company remains on the leading edge of using this new technology in a myriad of its products as part of its sustainability efforts.
One of AT&T’s newest sustainable products—the Motorola P793 Back-Up Battery Charger—is made from recycled plastic water bottles, which comprise about 25 percent of the product. The P793 is a portable back-up power accessory that has dual ports so it can charge more than one USB compatible electronic device at a time. Once a device is fully charged, the charger cuts power supply automatically, reducing any wasted energy, much like AT&T’s 2010-launched ZERO Charger that turns itself off after a device is fully charged. The new charger also doesn’t contain brominated flame retardants, phthalates, or polyvinyl chloride, and is certified CarbonFree® by CarbonFund.org. The P793 Back-Up Battery Charger is a CarbonFree® first for AT&T.
AT&T’s Samsung Evergreen device, which is comprised of 70 percent recycled plastics, earned the company Platinum Certification from UL Environment after its launch in 2010, partly due to the fact that the company not only collected over 3.7 million used cellular phones by offering its customers 2,000 drop-off points for old cellular phones and accessories, but the company also recycled 1.8 million pounds of batteries and accessories for cellular phones to recycle. The Samsung Evergreen is a quick messaging device with that allows AT&T customers to download data in over 195 countries and make calls in over 220 countries with the Evergreen, which features “quad-band GSM technology” and “dual-band mobile broadband connectivity,” given data and cellular restrictions imposed within those countries.
AT&T has also made a concentrated effort in other areas, such as reducing emissions in its 73,500-vehicle corporate fleet. In 2009, AT&T invested $565 million in deploying 15,000 alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) through 2018 in a bid to save 49 million gallons of gasoline and reduce carbon emissions by 211,000 metric tons during the course of the 10 year plan. AT&T also challenged its customers to switch to paperless billing in 2010, through its One Million Mobile Eco Challenge.
The company was also added to the Corporate Responsibility Magazine’s 12th Annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens List.
In 2009, Coca-Cola launched its PlantBottle packaging for many of their products. Although PlantBottle is chemically identical to polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the monoethylene glycol (MEG) is derived from sugarcane rather than oil and accounts for 30 percent of the bottle’s mass. The remaining 70 percent is a petroleum-based terephthalic acid (TPA). Coca-Cola opened a new facility in Africa, where it will manufacture its Valpre Spring Water line using the PlantBottle packaging in Heidelberg, and the company also opened a facility in the UK in September, also using its PlantBottle packaging.
Other companies have taken up bioplastics technology in their packaging, such as Pepsico, Ford, Mazda, and Procter & Gamble. Nestle launched the use of bioplastic caps for its Brazilian milk products Ninho and Molico, but likely won’t accomplish full scale bioplastics use and availability until 2015. However, the company has approximately 30 projects lined up involving bioplastics use for its products. Danone introduced bioplastic containers in August and September for its Activia and Danonhinho fermented milk products.
Toyota now uses bio-PET in floor carpets, seat trim, and other surfaces for its Sai hybrid in Japan. In January 2011, Toyota launched its Lexus CT 200h with a bio-PET-lined trunk. Fuji Xerox has already introduced a biomass-based plastic, made up of 30 percent or more polylactic acid (PLA) by weight, to some of its products in Japan, garnering them the “BiomassPla logo” from Japan BioPlastics Association (JBPA). The biomass plastics are used in some of the company’s plastic parts for copy machines and printers.
Now companies such as H.J. Heinz are catching up, adopting PlantBottle for its packaging beginning in June 2011.
The sustainability efforts of major brand name companies to promote significant change in the way packaging and business are done places them as leaders within their industries. While sweeping change won’t happen overnight the companies are helping to make such endeavors a standard part of business operations rather than the exceptions.
Tags: at&t, bioplastics, cellular telephones, climate change, coca-cola, Danone, Ford, Mazda, motorola, Nestle, pepsi co, plant bottle, Procter & Gamble, samsung, sustainable packaging
For zero-waste advocates, bioplastics made from materials such as PLA hold great cradle-to-cradle promise because they are chemically recyclable back into their original form and can then be reconstituted into any packaging material pending market demand. Of course, issues relating to production (food vs. fuel) and collection at scale, efficient sorting, transport, and re-manufacturing, must be sorted out as the industry matures. But as more companies like AT&T, PepsiCo, Coke, and others, increase their demand for bioplastics and other more sustainable packaging alternatives, the day will come when consumers enjoy a closed-loop product and packaging system, hopefully sooner than later.