Sustainable packaging: Nestle Waters North America wins innovation award for Eco-Shape bottle

Nestle Waters North America announced it is the recipient of a 2010 Gold Connecticut Quality Improvement Award's (CQIA) Innovation Prize for its next-generation Eco-Shape half-liter bottle, which uses 25% less PET plastic than its predecessor Eco-Shape bottle.

The CQIA is America's first and oldest state-level quality award using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for Performance Excellence criteria in a campaign to advance innovative programs that improve quality, performance and marketplace competitiveness. Mac Baldrige was CEO of Scovill Brass in Waterbury, Connecticut, before becoming Secretary of Commerce under President Reagan in 1987. The CQIA Innovation Prize recognizes manufacturing and service companies, health care, education, government and other not-for-profit organizations that accept the challenge of developing unique products, services and processes capable of tackling real-world problems.

"Winning this CQIA prize is testament to Nestle Waters' leadership in innovation," said Kevin Mathews, Director of Health and Environmental Affairs at Nestle Waters. "As a company that depends on natural resources, sustainability is an integral part of our values and business, and we understand that reducing the amount of plastic in our bottles - or 'lightweighting' - is the best thing a beverage company can do to reduce its environmental impact. Our next-generation Eco-Shape bottle is the latest step in our company's long history of addressing our products' life cycle through innovation."

In February 2010, Nestle Waters commissioned a first-of-its-kind peer-reviewed life cycle assessment (LCA) to better understand the environmental impact of bottled water and alternative beverages. The LCA found that Eco-Shape is one of the most environmentally responsible packaged drink choices primarily because it contains the least amount of plastic among the packaged beverage options reviewed in the study. Weighing an average of 9.3 grams, the next-generation Eco-Shape bottle uses 60 percent less plastic than the company's pre-Eco-Shape PET bottle, first introduced in the mid-1990s.

Eco-Shape is credited with reducing Nestle Waters' carbon emission equivalents by more than 356,000 tons since 2007 - the equivalent to removing 78,000 cars from the road. Eco-Shape also features a label that is 35 percent smaller on average than the previous label, saving nearly 10 million pounds of paper annually.

The 24th Annual Connecticut Quality Improvement Award Conference on Quality and Innovation will take place on Friday, October 29, 2010, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Water's Edge Resort and Conference Center in Westbrook, Connecticut.

SOURCE: Nestle Waters North America

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