Badoit sparkling water leaves its red or green dress for a transparent bottle, of which only the label and the cap keep the differentiating colors.
"Until now, the colored bottles of our Badoit brand went through specialized recycling channels and were necessarily intended for uses other than food, explains Danone in a press release. From now on, the material from each recycled Badoit bottle can be used to make new bottles if properly sorted."
Each year, 70,000 tons of colored PET bottles are put on the market in France by all the players. Danone specifies that this initiative aims more broadly to supply the industry with recycled PET (rPET) and to reduce the use of virgin plastic.
The group is also studying "other solutions in favor of a circular economy such as deposit for recycling or even reuse" .
When NGOs put pressure on
This change in packaging comes shortly after the French food multinational was sued in January by the NGOs Surfrider Europe, ClientEarth and Zero Waste France for failure to comply with its duty of care regarding plastics.
The associations, which attribute to the group the not very praiseworthy title of being "one of the 10 biggest polluters in the world" the NGOs, which are part of the French government's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, are denouncing a failure to comply with the French law of March 17, 2017, which requires companies to assess the impact of their activities on the environment, health and human rights. Yet despite the sale in 2021 of the equivalent of 74 plastic Eiffel Towers, the issue of this material is completely absent from its vigilance plans according to NGOs.
