Nordic Awarded exclusive mandate to raise funds for Bio degradable bottle water company

The global bottled water market valuation grew by 7% in 2006 to reach a value of $60,938.1 million. The volume of bottled water grew by 8.1% in 2006 to 115,393.5 million liters. In 2011, the market is forecast to have a value of $86,421.2 million, an increase of 41.8% since 2006. In 2011, the market is forecast to have a volume of 174,286.6 million liters, an increase of 51% since 2006.

The global rate of consumption more than quadrupled between 1990 and 2005. Purified water is currently the leading global seller, with U.S. companies dominating the field, and natural spring water, purified water and flavored water being the fastest-growing market segments.

Effects of bottled water

A large pile of Poland Spring bottles

Wasted material

The major criticism of bottled water concerns the bottles themselves. Individual use bottled water is generally packaged in Polyethylene terephthalate (PET). According to a NAPCOR study, PET water bottles account for 50% of all the PET bottles and containers collected by curbside recycling, and the recycling rate for water bottles is 23.4%, an increase over the 2006 rate of 20.1%. PET bottled water containers make up one-third of 1 percent of the waste stream in the United States.

The International Bottled Water Association also reports that the average weight of a plastic bottle water was 13.83 grams in 2007, compared to 18.90 grams in 2000, representing a 26.7% decline. Pepsi-Co has since introduced a bottle weighing 10.9 grams and using 20 percent less plastic, which it says is the lightest bottle of its kind that is nationally distributed.

An estimated 50 billion bottles of water are consumed per annum in the US and around 200 billion bottles globally.

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What happened to bio butanol

While pondering what happened to advanced biofuels I found myself wondering what happened to another widely touted biofuel option - bio-butanol.

Bio-butanol was heavily promoted back in 2007 and 2008 as a biofuel option that had many advantages over ethanol.

The key way [butanol is better than ethanol] is higher energy density. Whereas ethanol is around about two-thirds the energy density [of gasoline], with butanol we’re in the high eighties [in terms of percent].

It’s less volatile [than ethanol]. It isn’t as corrosive, so we don’t have issues with it at higher concentrations beginning to eat at aluminum or polymer components in fuel systems and dispensing systems. And it’s not as hydroscopic–it doesn’t pick up water, which is what ethanol can do if you put it in relatively low concentrations. So we can put it through pipelines.

A range of companies are still pursuing the bio-butanol dream, with one (Optinol) recently declaring it had achieved "energy cost parity" with ethanol for its for (sugar derived) bio-butanol. Another company (Cobalt) is now producing reasonably large volumes of fuel at a pilot plant. BP and Dupont also have a joint venture that they hope will produce butanol at a price competitive with petrol.

There are also attempts underway to produce jet fuel using butanol produced at a converted ethanol facility.

As with ethanol, a number of organisations are looking at producing butanol from cellulosic material, with the University of Michigan and UCLA leading research in the area.

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