The Coca-Cola Co., Ford Motor Co., H.J. Heinz Co., Nike Inc., and Procter & Gamble Co. have partnered to promote technology to make 100 percent plant-based plastic.

The partnership aims to speed up the commercialization of 100 percent plant-based PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, for use in beverage bottles, apparel, automotive carpet, and other products.

"They are really building a new industry," said Erin Simon, senior program officer of packaging for the World Wildlife Fund. WWF is serving as a technical adviser to the Plant PET Technology Collaborative. The partnership officially launched June 5.

The partnership will enable the companies to pool resources to bring the product to market more quickly, Angela Harris, a biomaterials research engineer at Ford, said June 8.

The technology for making 100 percent plant-based plastics exists, but it is currently too expensive to use on a large scale, Simon said. The biobased plastics industry has to compete with the existing fossil fuel-based plastics industry, which has been around longer and is more efficient and less expensive.

Ford uses traditional PET materials in seat fabric, carpet fibers, upholstery, trunk trims, exterior pieces, and other parts of vehicles. The new 100 percent plant-based material could potentially be used for all of these products, Harris said.

The effort will build off Coca-Cola's success with the PlantBottle, which is made of 30 percent plant-based material.

"They definitely have been leading the effort," Harris said, "[and now] we are going to work on how we get from 30 percent to 100 percent -- basically the next generation of that material."

More than half, or 52 percent, of Coca-Cola's global packaging is made of PET. Coca-Cola has set a goal to use plant-based PET for all its PET plastic bottles by 2020. 

Heinz licensed the PlantBottle technology from Coca-Cola and made more than 120 million ketchup bottles with the plant-based material last year.

 "[W]e look forward to the day when we can produce a Heinz Ketchup bottle made from 100 percent plant-based PET," the company said in an emailed statement.

No Exact Date for Commercialization

The companies do not know exactly when the 100 percent plastic will be ready for commercial use. "We're just starting it up," Harris said.

The companies will likely bring in suppliers and university researchers to present technologies currently being developed, Harris said. The companies will then discuss whom to partner with to develop the product. "We're showing the supply community that we want these materials," she said.

The group will also set standards dictating the exact content of the plastic as well as its lifecycle environmental impact. "This would be a brand new material," Harris said.

For Ford, it is part of a long-term strategy for moving away from petroleum-based plastics, Harris said, since petroleum is a limited resource. Additionally, plant-based plastics have a lower environmental footprint.

"It's exciting that [the companies] are putting resources in to do this and not just waiting for someone else to do it," Harris said.