Reusable PET bottle made entirely of recycled material

The packaging and recycling specialist Alpla and the mineral water company Privatbrunnen Tönissteiner Sprudel have developed a reusable PET bottle made entirely of recycled material. The reusable 1-litre bottle for mineral water reduces carbon consumption and also offers logistical advantages thanks to its low weight. It is available at retail outlets with immediate effect. 

The perfect-fit design of the reusable rPET bottle means it can be used with Tönissteiner’s existing twelve-bottle crates. Up to 160 crates containing 1,920 more bottles can be transported per lorry load. The optimised return of empty Tönissteiner rPET and glass containers on a pallet of standardised crates also speeds up the cycle and reduces the bottle sorting work of wholesalers and retailers. When the reusable bottle reaches the end of its lifespan as determined by the number of cycles it goes through, it can now be turned into rPET at the Alplarecycling plants and recycled into new bottles. Laser markings indicate the number of cycles a bottle has been through and complement the quality controls at the refilling stage. 

“The packaging of the future is sustainable, light and safe. We at Alpla already deliver in this regard with a circular economy based on the bottle-to-bottle principle, weight optimisation and systematic design for recycling. Working with Tönissteiner, we have brought all of these approaches together to create a new reusable solution made entirely of rPET,” said Georg Pescher, Managing Director of Alpla Germany. 

“Tönissteiner stands for the sustainable use of resources. In Alpla, we have found an innovative partner for the introduction of our first own reusable rPET bottle. The climate-friendly bottle has been perfectly tailored to our sorting, bottling and transport processes,” emphasised Tönissteiner Managing Director, Hermann-Josef Hoppe.