Over a certain quantity of rPET (80% according to IMSDAL), plastic bottles lose their resistance to common recycling processes thus shortening the product life to as low as 2 to 4 recycling cycles. Having discovered this, IMSDAL set a threshold of 80% rPET in its water bottles in order to be able to recycle them indefinitely.

Today, consumers go through almost 1.4 trillion beverage containers every year, representing a vast amount of packaging material that can be collected and reused or recycled. Proper handling of used packaging conserves precious resources like energy, water and crude oil.

2 kilos of crude oil to produce 1 kilo of pet plastics. Therefore, PET recycling is also pivotal to reduce GHG emissions.

In 2019 Imsdal sold the first bottled water in Norway to be distributed in a 100% recycled plastic bottle. However the company quickly realized that bottles made with 100% rPET lost the inherent qualities of virgin PET: they became grey and most importantly unrecyclable after as low as 2 to 4 cycles in the worst case scenarios. As a solution, IMSDAL started producing bottles with a mix of 80% rPET and 20% virgin PET to maintain the product qualities and allow indefinite loops.

The bottles can now be recycled indefinitely minimizing the need for virgin resources in the long term.

IMSDAL is owned by Ringnes, the largest brewer in Norway which is itself owned by the Carlsberg Group.