Stories
Biota Spring Water

Biota_Spring_Water

David Zutler is the founder of BIOTA Spring Water, the first bottling company to use biodegradable bottles made from cornstarch. Fourteen years ago, David Zutler and his brother decided to go into bottled water because it was a growth industry. For over a decade they were disturbed by the fact that billions of bottles were ending up in landfills all over the world. Last year alone, approximately 95 billion, out of 120 billion produced petroleum based plastic water bottles ended up in landfills in the U.S. That’s enough petroleum to power 400,000 vehicles for a year. In 2002, Zutler did some research and found that Cargill and Dow Chemical had developed a bio-based plastic made from corn, using work by Patrick Gruber. What was new about this bio-based plastic was the clarity that was available from it. The potential of using it for a water bottle was there. Coincidently, he contacted them in May 2002, one month after they opened their refinery, making the resin from local corn in Blair, Nebraska. By June 2002, Zutler and Cargill-Dow were working together.

Zutler tells the story, "The first project I worked with them on was to help market corntainers, bio-plastic containers for deli use. I was the one that initiated the contact between Cargill-Dow and Wild Oats, a national grocery chain. I helped all the way through the process, until Wild Oats rolled out the first corntainers in the world, in a test market in Oregon. The public was very responsive to it. Deli sales went up. They introduced it in all the Wild Oats on a national basis. There were no other corntainers in the mass marketplace in the U.S. at the time."

Willie Nelson with David Zutler

"The Nebraska grown corn is refined into polylactic acid resin (PLA). It is 100% corn. It looks like little white BB's. The NatureWorks refinery ships the raw resin to Salt Lake City, where BIOTA’s preforms are made. There are different converters. Each converter makes their own products out of the resin. There was a converter that was making the corntainers, but they couldn’t get them out into the marketplace. I helped get them into the marketplace. Once I helped them get into the marketplace, I said I would like to work with them (Cargill-Dow) to produce the world’s first planet-friendly water bottle made from their (NatureWorks) resin."

"We put up the capital to develop bottles, labels, and preforms. A preform looks like a test tube with threads on top. It goes into an injection blow-molding machine and out comes the bottle. No one knew that it would work. We were the ones that formulated and came up with the concept and set up the protocols and paid for the development and the production."

Everybody likes Biota

Every 80 bottles at BIOTA saves a gallon of oil. Last year alone, 120 billion plastic bottles were produced just in the U.S, that's 1.5 billion gallons of oil, or 35.7 billion barrels. In addition to reducing demand on crude oil, and using a renewable resource, cornplastic uses 50% less energy to produce than PET plastic. It also can be reused as bottles again and again.

Zutler explains, "Corn based plastic, PLA, can be broken down in a hydroviscosity tank, which is basically nothing more than a heated vat of water with certain additives. The PLA will break back down into lactic acid and can be made into new bottles, you can reclaim it."

"There are four different ways to dispose of PLA. I think you’ll appreciate this. Number one is the hydrolyzing of it, reclaiming it back to lactic acid to make new bottles. Number two, since it burns clean, is to use it as a renewable energy source. Number three is what everybody has seized upon, the biodegradable ability of it to compost. That’s pretty cool, but then you have to use new corn to make new bottles. It’s still a lot better than what we have now."

There are landfills burning all over the world. For example, in the Caribbean and in Mexico they have switched now to PET bottles, from glass. They don’t have any recycling and the majority end up in landfills that are already filled, so the governments are burning the landfills 24 hours a day. It's a horrible problem that creates a lot of very toxic smoke....

Number four - if our bottles end up in a land fill the consumer is still making a difference.  The majority of bottles end up in landfills, and at least our bottles that are being thrown away are made from a renewable resource instead of fossil fuel."

Four years later, he's helping other companies make the switch. Zutler says, "We’re working with a major company right now which I can’t tell you. It’s going to be a big influence in the marketplace. It’s going to make a big difference.  We get inquiries from all over the world. We’re helping a major company down in Australia & New Zealand. We helped one company in England. We’re helping another company in Italy to start making bottles out PLA versus PET.

Our slogan is: 'BIOTA is changing the world one bottle at a time'."

you can help make an impact by requesting BIOTA in stores and restaurants that don't carry it. BIOTA is still a small company. Spreading the word and requesting it will help stores choose it for their shelves. www.biotaspringwater.com