Johnnie Walker in a paper bottle. Will this change work for us ... for health?

If you soon go to the store for a bottle of Johnnie Walker, do not be surprised if you see paper instead of glass. The producer of the famous whiskey is partially switching to "ecological" packaging.

Diageo, the owner of the Johnnie Walker brand, intends to replace some bottles with paper equivalents from 2021 . To this end, a new Pulpex company will be created to deal with the production of new packaging. Paper bottles will also be created for the Unilever and PepsiCo brands, so don't be surprised if the bartender prepares you a drink based on Johnnie Walker and Pepsi poured from paper.

The paper bottle is to replace the glass one, all in the name of ecology.

Diageo explains that the paper bottles will be made of wood pulp and will be fully recyclable. Wood pulp (or pulp) is a semi-finished product made of so-called paper pulp, i.e. wood obtained solely for the needs of the paper industry. The pulp will be pressed under high pressure into prepared molds and then cured in ovens using microwaves.

While I applaud the attempts to eliminate disposable plastic bottles, replacing glass with paper does not seem to make sense. At first, this treatment looks like typical green-washing. After all, glass is an ecological material, fully recyclable.

Diageo claims that making a paper bottle is designed to consume much less energy and emit less carbon dioxide than glass packaging.

Not just paper whiskey. You can also buy wine in paper bottles, and soon there will be beer in paper.

Frugalpac is a company that produces paper bottles for wines. The manufacturer emphasizes that the paper bottle is five times lighter than the glass one, and generates a six times smaller carbon footprint in its life cycle. The whole is also easy to recycle, although here the same can also be said about glass. An additional advantage of this solution is the fact that paper bottles can be produced almost everywhere, including in the winery itself.

The Frugalpac paper bottle has a food insert inside which protects the paper from getting wet. Before throwing away the bottle, remove the insert and throw it into the waste ... yes, you guessed it - plastic. The producer argues that he uses 77 percent in his bottles. less plastic than in bottles made entirely of this material. Frugalpac neatly ignores the fact that there is almost no plastic in the glass bottles of wine (apart from the label and possibly sealing the cork).

Carlsberg, a beer producer experimenting with paper packaging, follows a similar path. A paper beer bottle already exists, but it also has a plastic insert inside. Initially, it was plastic obtained from PET recycling, and later from biodegradable PEF. Ultimately, the insert is to be made of biodegradable material, but so far it has not been created yet.

It is impossible not to notice that you need to cut down a tree to create paper.

And even if we talk of harvesting wood in a sustainable way from controlled forests, the advantages over glass packaging - and thus made in fact from sand - still seem at least doubtful.

In this context, Ecosia works better instead of bottles creating a search engine, and instead of cutting down trees, plants new ones. The creators of Ecosia set themselves the challenge of planting a tree every time we use their search engine.

They've just planted a hundred millionth tree. And I understand the influence of technology on the planet!

Johnnie Walker in a paper bottle. Will this change work for us ... for health?