Comment on Aidan's Review

            Aidan’s review of “The Race to Greener Bottles Could Be Long” was an interesting look at a new form of competition arising between Coke and Pepsi: who can make more environmentally-friendly bottles.  One well-presented aspect of the review was that it included how these bottles are going to be made green.  Both Coke and Pepsi plan on utilizing plastic made from plants and their by-products, as opposed to the petroleum based plastics that are currently used.  This would cut back on environmental impact as it would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced in plastic production.  Another interesting part of Aidan’s review was that it delved into how much the companies plan on switching over to the new bottle format.  Coke plans on rolling out the bottles in the next few years, while Pepsi will be testing the production of these bottles by producing 200,000 in the next year.  Hopefully, this will convince the companies that switching to plant bottles is both the environmentally responsible thing to do as well as the financially more beneficial thing to do.  A final well-presented aspect of Aidan’s review is that it addressed what plant products should be used for ht e production of plant based bottles.  Since producing too much of a plant would affect food prices and land usage, it is recommended that corn stalks, a waste product that is already produced in abundance, be used to produce these bottles.  If this is done, greener bottles can be produced without greatly harming the production of other plants.  An area in which Aidan could have improved his review is that he could have explained why the companies had decided to switch their bottle format.  While he does say the change is coming, there is little explanation about what prompted the change.  It would be interesting to understand what inspired these two companies to make such a big change.  Another thing Aidan could have included in his review is what harmful effects regular plastic bottles cause.  He stated that plastic bottles are known to harm people’s health, but never explained what these harms are, how the old bottles caused them, or how the new bottles would alleviate the problem.  However, besides these oversights, the review was very well-written and informative.  The most interesting part of this review was that competition between these two companies, Coke and Pepsi, is so strong that when one of them changes their bottle format the other feels pressured to do so as well.  Hopefully, more constructive competition such as this will make big corporations more and more eco-friendly as time progresses.