Waste to opportunity: Migros and LanzaTech produce carbon captured PET bottle

06 Oct 2021 --- Switzerland’s largest retail company Migros is producing what it says is the world’s first PET beverage bottle made from captured carbon emissions produced by US-based company LanzaTech.

The bottles contain up to 30% PET made from capturing and recycling carbon emissions from the production of steel.

Capturing and utilizing carbon waste emissions is a growing technology providing the packaging industry with a new way to avoid reliance on fossil fuels.

“Our partnership with the Mibelle Group and its subsidiary Migros is critical to showing the world what is possible,” remarks Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech.

“Today, you can walk into a store and purchase products made from carbon emissions that are packaged in bottles made from those same emissions.”

“We have turned waste carbon from a problem into an opportunity. Our partnership with Migros and Mibelle highlights how we can be carbon smart on the inside and outside of the bottle.”

Up to 30% of Migros’ new PET bottles will be sourced from captured carbon.LanzaTech
Last year, LanzaTech partnered with L’Oréal and energy giant Total to begin producing cosmetic packaging from carbon-capturing technology.

LanzaTech captures emissions from industrial sites and uses a biological gas fermentation process to create ethanol.

The carbon monoxide in steel mill emissions, used to create Migros’ PET bottles, is an unavoidable byproduct of steelmaking chemistry and inevitably combusted and released as atmospheric carbon emissions.

Like yeast fermenting sugar to make alcohol, LanzaTech uses a microbe – or a biocatalyst – to ferment the wasted carbon. The gases are captured from the flue stacks at industrial sites and fed to a bioreactor where the fermentation takes place.

A dehydration process can then be used to convert ethanol into ethylene, which can be polymerized into plastics.

Carbon conversion on the rise
The bottles at Migros are one example of how carbon-capturing technology is being used to replace virgin polymers in packaging.

This year, Dutch biopolymer pioneer Avantium was awarded €1.78 million (US$2.17 million) in EU grants to develop its Volta Technology for producing CO2-based polymers. The platform technology uses electrochemical processes to convert CO2 into high-value products and chemical building blocks, similar to LanzaTech’s processes.

The EU Horizon 2020 program awarded the funding to Avantium for its participation in the CATCO2VERS 1, CO2SMOS2 and VIVALDI3 consortia. The EU will pay out the funding in four tranches over four years.

Last year, Unilever announced plans to transfer 100% of the carbon derived from fossil fuels in its cleaning and laundry product formulations to renewable or recycled carbon. The company pledged €1 billion (US$1.185 billion) within the Clean Future program to finance biotechnology research, low carbon chemistry, as well as CO2 and waste utilization.

Edited

By Louis Gore-Langton

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