Not only are plastic bottles bad for the environment, but the labels attached to these bottles make the process even more difficult. Nikunj Bafna is a student on a mission to solve this problem that the industry faces. The process is more manageable by reducing the amount of water by plastic labels affixed to bottles and eliminating removing the labels before recycling. The result of these two steps is a bottle designed where the label comes off once the bottle cap is opened and the seal is broken; it is easy to dispose of and is 100% biodegradable. No longer do plastic labels create an issue for recycling; plus, the design is much sleeker than before.
The thing about recycling plastic bottles today is that it consists only of the bottle – To recycle one out of many component pieces of a plastic bottle is not successful recycling. It is estimated that 180,000 tonnes of waste labels are land-filled in the UK each year and labels contribute to a majority of ocean plastic waste.
