When I·DO Bio was founded, one of the first questions that concerned us was: Glass or PET? At first glance, glass seemed to us to be the naturally more environmentally friendly and appealing alternative. We initially wanted to start I·DO Bio as a juice bar, modeled on the great juice bars in my hometown of New York. Glass would have been the clear choice here.
In the end, however, we decided to bring our cold-pressed and unpasteurized juices directly to your home via our express delivery service as well as via the catering trade and retail trade. And suddenly we had to reconsider the decision between glass and PET. We looked at many studies on this and came across results that sometimes surprised us too:
- On the one hand, PET bottles are usually superior to glass bottles in terms of the overall ecological balance. The energy required for manufacturing, cleaning and recycling is greater for glass bottles. When it comes to transport, a glass bottle is also at a disadvantage when it comes to protecting the environment due to its higher weight. Since we ship our juices throughout Germany, the higher weight would mean higher fuel consumption in the long run.
- Much of the bad reputation plastic bottles get goes back to previous generations of plastic bottles. Today's PET bottles contain neither bisphenol A nor other plasticizers (phthalates) and are therefore considered harmless, for example by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR). In addition, since our products are never heated, the risk of interactions with the PET is particularly low for us.
- On the other hand, only the use of plastic bottles allows us to preserve our juices using the gentle HPP process. If we couldn't do that, the inevitable result would be juice thrown away, wasting precious organic produce. Because it would always happen that juice in our shop, in the shop or in your refrigerator would exceed its shelf life and could no longer be consumed.
We have therefore decided to use PET bottles against the background of the greatest possible sustainability and comfort for our customers. Even if the recycling of PET bottles is not ideal, great progress has been made here in recent years. We make our contribution to recycling by participating in the dual "green dot" system. PET bottles are further used in the recycling process, either to produce new bottles or to produce textile fibers. If you have no further use for our bottles, you should always make sure to dispose of them properly. For example in the yellow sack or the yellow bin. In this way you ensure that the raw materials used are recycled in the best possible way. Incidentally, we have been working on the conversion to bio-PET for some time. More on that shortly.
In a perfect world, glass would be lighter and less resource-intensive to produce than PET, and I wouldn't have to write this post. Unfortunately, that's not the case, and we had to compromise on our packaging. This is the only way we are able to bring our cold-pressed and unpasteurized organic juices to you in the most environmentally friendly way possible. And this without heating and without the addition of synthetic garbage.
With this in mind - Juice responsibly and stay fresh,
- Alex
