Sustainable Packaged Water Bottle +
A reusable & sustainable water bottle packaging using TetraPak designed to reduce PET plastic waste.
Industrial Design | 2 weeks | September 2021
Brief
The idea was to alter current packaged drinking water or design a new substitute to reduce PET plastic waste. Water is essential to all life hence has to be made affordable and accessible. Billions of Pet plastic bottles are unaccounted for every year. Majority of them end up in landfills or the ocean disrupting ecosystems/habitats. This designed concept that would replace pet plastic bottles is a more sustainable approach, emphasising on reusability and reducing waste through longevity.
After a considerable amount of research on TetraPaks and pet bottles, I decided to take this context as my area of intervention and further built a product around it. After researching on the making and recycling process of the TetraPak, I listed down its raw materials such as cardboard, aluminium & polyethylene. Then I looked up materials similar to the above. After considering the industrial side of production, I can conclude that the next best option towards replacing cardboard is reconstituted paper mache. This material is a good alternative, but cardboard still has an edge when it comes to integrity and finishing. The layer that provides rigidity to the structure of the tetra pak sadly cannot be replaced by any other metal as low grade aluminium is cheap and easy to stretch into thin sheets. It is the cheapest non corrosive metal on this planet and replacing it with another metal is not possible. Although completely eliminating it is a way but that would enable the tetra pak to have around 25% plastic and that would make it more unsustainable and harder to recycle. The 5% polyethylene used might be replaced by another compound of ethene but why change it when polyethylene is cheaper and easy to produce. Considering all these facts, there are many ways to make TetraPaks using other alternative materials but that would affect production cost, production time, recyclability etc. I am not qualified enough/do not possess the amount of skills to determine the exact reasons behind using these materials as scientist have already carried out numerous tests to come to this conclusion. But it is safe to say there is no better alternative to TetraPak making; there are some, just less feasible.
reU
Sustainable Packaged Water
Product
This product is an alternative for Pet plastic bottles that can be refilled and reused for longer durations. It is made out of TetraPak making it easy to recycle and less harmful for the environment. The product has a ridged cardboard body with an aseptic interior, same as a carton of milk. Its opaque body does not allow sunlight to enter increasing the waters shelf life and quality. It has a tab to secure the bottle that also helps house the cap. The tab can be retracted for ease of drinking and acts as a strap to hold or hook the bottle. The product follows a minimalistic design language that reduces the need for printing with harmful pigments directly onto the exterior. The design complements the feature of recyclability by making every component of the bottle easy to detach. The form of the bottle makes it compact and easy to grab, the exposed cardboard is more of a signifier than an aesthetic component. It helps individuals notice the material of the product making it easier to deduce what type of recycling should be applied to it. A pattern just above the cap acts as a grip for the index finger. The dotted grip pattern on the cap was chosen over the more commonly used vertical groves to complement its design, it also acts as a contrast for the parallel ridges on the cardboard body. The bottle is designed to ware out after a certain amount of time, this is to ensure the bottles sterile nature which fails to happen in PET bottles. Plastic bottles are used over and over again for long durations of time deteriorating the quality and hygiene of the water inside. 'reU' is designed to be used for short periods of time and can be safely discarded, it is not only acting as a carry on water bottle but also reduces the need to buy plastic bottles which are more durable but further more harmful for the environment.
Prototype scale - 1:1
