Origin’s tethered beverage cap is made from the same material as the bottle—PET. (Photo: Business Wire)
Origin Materials’ patent-pending design keeps caps connected to the bottles and enables mono-material recycling, eliminating the need to separate caps and bottles made from different materials.
WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Materials technology company Origin Materials recently disclosed some of the engineering and design innovations in its manufacturing of what are reported to be “the first tethered PET caps ever made.” The polyethylene terephthalate (PET) caps can be made with unmodified virgin PET plastic or 100 percent recycled PET plastic, enabling lighter packaging and extending product shelf life, according to a release from Origin Materials.
“With our leading PET cap technology and manufacturing systems, we are extremely well positioned to address a $65 billion caps and closures market that consumes billions upon billions of caps per year—which today cannot be recycled into new caps, only downcycled,” said John Bissell, co-founder and co-CEO of Origin Materials, in the release.
An important design feature is the tether, which helps keep the caps out of the environment by connecting them to the bottle. Origin’s design is also said to improve user experience by angling the cap away from the mouth, not toward it.
A close-up view of Origin’s tethered PET beverage cap. Its design is said to improve user experience by angling the cap away from the mouth. (Photo: Business Wire)
“Our patent-pending tethered cap design is simple, clever, and user-friendly,” Bissell said in the release. “We use the threads of the PET cap and bottle to lock the cap into place, angled away from the mouth, not toward it. We are combining the performance and sustainability advantages of our PET caps—recyclability, shelf-life extension, lightweighting, ability to use recycled PET, and enablement of mono-material packaging—with an excellent user experience.
“If you’re going to keep caps connected to bottles, the logical thing to do is make the cap and the bottle from the same material: PET,” Bissell continued. “Otherwise, recycling centers face the problem of separating tethered HDPE or polypropylene caps from PET bottles. With our solution, caps and bottles can be recycled together easily, with no need to separate. That’s a real breakthrough for recycling circularity because it increases purity and keeps valuable, high-performing PET plastic in the loop.”
The tethered PET cap complements Origin’s previously announced PET closure, reported to be the lightest carbonated soft drink (CSD) cap compatible with the “plastic-closure only” (PCO) 1881 neck finish. Origin’s PCO 1881-compatible caps will be commercially available beginning in the fourth quarter of 2024. Its PCO 1881-compatible tethered caps will follow afterward, the company said.
Bissell said that Origin’s PET cap innovations are “perfectly suited” for the regulatory environment embodied by the EU Single-Use Plastic Directive, which came into effect in July. It mandates that “caps stay connected to bottles throughout the European Union,” he said.
“We expect many other regions to introduce their own tethered beverage cap requirements as well, following the example of the EU,” he added.