The new design of the Green Fiber Bottle was unveiled yesterday at the Sustainable Brands 2016 Copenhagen conference. The conference, attended by 500 business leaders, aimed at inspiring business success through innovation and ‘Activating Purpose’ towards a sustainable future.

As part of the work of the Carlsberg Circular Community, Carlsberg kicked off the development project in 2015 with Danish packaging company EcoXpac to develop a beer bottle made from sustainably sourced wood fiber. The first prototype of a fiber-based bottle was revealed in January 2015 by Professor Flemming Besenbacher, Chairman of the Carlsberg Foundation, at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The new design of the beer bottle was developed with Carlsberg’s partners in the Carlsberg Circular Community as well as CP+B Copenhagen and Kilo, a Danish industrial design studio Launched in 2014, the Carlsberg Circular Community (CCC) is a cooperation between the Carlsberg Group and selected partners with the aim of pursuing a circular, zero-waste economy by using the Cradle-to-Cradle framework when developing and marketing new products. The present prototype, which has been prepared based on the distinctive Carlsberg design, shows how the bottle might look when it hits the market.

As Carlsberg Sustainability Director Simon Boas Hoffmeyer, proudly said: “The new bottle is a great milestone in the project, as having a physical prototype makes it easier for us to explain the new packaging format to consumers and colleagues. I think the new bottle looks great and shows how we can use innovation and design to help shape products for a better tomorrow.”

To which Håkon Langen, Packaging Innovation Director at Carlsberg, added: “The bottle has been created with input from some of the leading packaging specialists in the world, who are very excited to participate in the project. Though we still have technical challenges to overcome, we're on track on the project.”

The Green Fiber Bottle promises to be a landmark in sustainable innovation. Its fibers will come from responsibly managed sources, with trees replanted at the same rate that they are harvested. While the bottle will degrade into environmentally non-harmful materials if discarded randomly, the intention is that it will form part of a proper waste management system, just like today’s bottles and cans.

The three-year project is supported by Innovation Fund Denmark and the Technical University of Denmark. The Green Fiber Bottle is scheduled to be test-launched in a pilot market in 2018.

http://www.carlsberggroup.com