Family-owned and operated CG Roxane LLC, which produces Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water in Novato, CA, has announced a number of sustainability initiatives for 2021. The company is breaking ground on expanded rPET facilities, furthering its goal to reach a minimum of 50% recycled PET at its plants across the United States and strengthen its team with experience in the sustainability arena.

CG Roxane has identified a building on the site of its Benton, TN, bottling plant to house the new rPET facility. The company is now in the process of retrofitting it toward becoming operational in early 2022. The Benton opening is a key component of CG Roxane’s goal to reach 50% rPET content in packaging.

The company's San Bernardino, CA, facility, which opened in November 2019, and Benton rPET plant will have a combined capacity to recycle approximately 70 million pounds of plastic bottles — 35 million pounds per plant — annually. Reprocessing all of these recycled plastic bottles saves the equivalent of over 570,000 gallons of crude oil in addition to approximately 420 million pounds of CO₂ per year.

PlasticsToday asked the company about its ability to obtain enough clean PET to support its requirements for recycled content bottles. Luke Genthe, CG Roxane San Bernardino Plant Manager, responded, “There is potential for a squeeze on the clean PET market if more states begin to mandate that certain percentages of recycled PET must be used in food and beverage containers without providing and improving collection infrastructure.”

Additionally, CG Roxane’s “1 Million Strong & Counting” campaign highlights the company’s 20-year partnership with American Forests, the oldest national non-profit organization in the country. It marks the upcoming milestone of one million trees being planted across the United States by the end of 2021. CG Roxane plans to build on this achievement by committing to planting one million more trees over the next 20 years.

CG Roxane said that the million-tree accomplishment validates its belief that “sustainability is not what you talk about, it’s what you do.” The initiative has had a positive impact on a range of locations, including Montana’s Custer National Forest, where the Kraft Springs fire blazed in 2002, as well as Angeles National Forest following the Station Fire of 2009, which burned almost 25% of the surrounding area.