Suntory ready to commercially use plant-based plastic bottle

Suntory Holdings Ltd. will soon commercially use the plastic bottles it developed with US biotechnology startup Anellotech Inc entirely from plant-derived material.

The eco-friendly bottles will be used for all of Suntory’s plastic containers by 2030.

Unlike most plastic bottles in the market, which are made only from petroleum, Suntory’s plant-based bottles use such substances as wood chips.

In 2020, Suntory used 290,000 tons of plastic bottles in and outside Japan, with recycled ones accounting for around 15 percent while those made in part from botanical material comprising seven percent.

Thirty percent of ingredients for containers used for Suntory Tennensui natural mineral water came from sugar cane molasses. In Suntory’s latest endeavor, the remaining 70 percent of the ingredients made from petroleum were replaced with wood chips, making the bottle exclusively plant-based.