Soft drink machine company, Sodastream, is using a public exhibition comprising 2,1900 PET bottles to urge manufacturers to develop more environmentally-friendly packaging for their products.
The Sodastream Eco Bottle exhibition was set up this week in Flinders Street Station, Melbourne, with the support of the Two Hands Project and the Boomerang Alliance. The exhibition is a nine foot tall SodaStream EcoBottle filled with 2,190 PET bottles from landfill – the number of bottles a family would save from waste over three years if they considered an alternate system like Sodastream.
Sodastream Australia managing director, Myles Anceschi, said "We care for the environment and we will not compromise on our environmental aim which is to rid the world of plastic bottles. The truth is that plastic bottles are destroying our planet. 340 billion bottles around the world still end up in landfills every year. Because of this threat to the planet we will continue telling the story."
Paul Sharp, co-founder of the Two Hands Project, which also aims to tackle plastic waste, said more than 30 percent of plastic pollution around the country is beverage-related, and insists manufacturers need to reassess how they deliver their products.
"Travelling Australia with the Two Hands Project, not once have I found a beach free of plastic," he said. "The solution is easy – manufacturers must choose to design pollution reducing methods to deliver their products. Sodastream is a leader in this respect."
Jeff Angel, national convenor at another waste reducing initiative, the Boomerang Alliance, added, "We need a new era of beverage container responsibility. The combination of the SodaStream system and a national container deposit system will massively reduce the landfilling or littering of 7 billion bottles and cans every year.
"It’s unfortunate that some big bottlers oppose such developments but it’s clear that the majority of the community want better solutions to litter and the wastage of resources," he said.