Over their decades of competition, the battle between Coca-Cola and PepsiCo has taken on many colors — brown (cola), orange (juice), blue (sport drinks) and clear (water). Now, they are fighting over green: The beverage rivals are racing to become the first to produce a plastic soda bottle made entirely from plants. But despite dueling announcements claiming technological breakthroughs, consumers should not expect to see many all-plant bottles on store shelves any time soon. Neither company is confident enough in the technology to say when, or even if, they will be able to deliver on their environmental ambitions. Coke delivered the latest volley on Thursday, saying it plans to work with three companies that are developing competing technologies to make plastic from plants, with bottles rolling out to consumers in perhaps a few years. PepsiCo is aiming to beat that timeline and claim the 100 percent green label first. The company declared in March that it had cracked the code of the all-plant plastic bottle, and on Thursday, it said that it was on schedule to conduct a test next year that involved producing 200,000 bottles made from plant-only plastic. But until Pepsi conducts the test, executives said they would not be able to predict when large-scale production of such bottles might begin. If the test fails to prove that the technologies favored by Pepsi are cost-effective at a commercial scale, more experimentation will be needed, said Denise H. Lefebvre, the company’s vice president for global beverage packaging. “The test is very important in really determining efficient cost and manufacturing processes,” Ms. Lefebvre said. She said the company was still working out details of the test, including what products to sell in the all-plant bottles and what type of plant materials to use to produce them. Read on at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/business/energy-environment/coca-cola-and-p...
