Chilmark Spring Water molds a better bottle
They were green long before it was cool to be green. From the moment they formed the Chilmark Spring Water Company, the Dunkl family went to extraordinary lengths to provide a chemical-free, all-natural product with the lightest possible impact on the environment. The water comes from a zealously protected natural spring in Chilmark. Brothers Frank and Peter Dunkl, mechanically inclined former Volkswagen mechanics, run the bottling line. Sister Heidi keeps the books in order.
Heidi Dunkl runs the administrative side of Chilmark Spring Water Company, while Peter Dunkl (left) and Frank Dunkl operate the bottling line. Photos by Steve Myrick
But there was one thing that always bothered them. "We had to package our products in bottles which we knew most people would be too lazy to recycle," said Frank Dunkl. "In our household for generations, we've always recycled everything. Rubber bands, string, paper, plastic, metals, glass. We don't throw out mixed garbage. We've always composted anything that can be composted, and recycled anything that can be recycled. But it's not yet the common way. The reality is that every time we bottle a thousand bottles, only 270 of those are likely to be recycled."
The thought of their bottles winding up in an incinerator or a landfill bothered Frank Dunkl so much that he and his family spent four years studying the issue, learning about solutions, and searching for a manufacturer that could supply them with a truly biodegradable bottle. Now, they think they've found it.
Frank Dunkl packs the finished product at Chilmark Spring Water Company, his family's bottling operation.
Molding the future
Inside the Chilmark Spring Water bottling plant at the Airport Business Park, Frank and Peter Dunkl demonstrate how the bottles are made. The bottles arrive on the Island as a plastic "pre-form." It looks like a test tube with a screw top. The pre-forms are warmed to the temperature of toast in a small oven, then placed by hand in a blow molding machine, two at a time. The molds close tight, and clean, dry air is forced into the heated pre-form at tremendous pressure. "I always explain, it's like blowing up a balloon inside a box. The balloon takes the shape of the box." When the molds spring open, two perfectly formed bottles are ready to be filled with Chilmark Spring Water.
The company has been making its own bottles for three years now, partly because doing so makes for a more reliable supply, but partly because it takes a lot less energy to make them here than it does to buy them and truck them to the Island. Before acquiring the bottle making machinery, six or seven times per year the company would send a truck to a supplier in New York to bring back plastic bottles.
"That's a lot of diesel fuel," Frank Dunkl said. By buying pre-forms, the company brings a year's worth of supply to the Island on one small truck, cutting down their carbon footprint, as well as saving on storage space.
The new biodegradable bottles start as a pre-form made of common plastic with a proprietary additive. Photo by Steve Myrick
Bottle chemistry
This week, the family-owned company began manufacturing bottles made with a new additive that will allow the plastic to biodegrade under normal landfill or composting conditions in 12 to 18 months. The bottles contain no toxic substances that will leach into the ground and will not produce noticeable amounts of methane or carbon dioxide as they break down. All this, according to the manufacturer.
The Dunkl family does not take plastic lightly. They have studied the manufacturing process to the minutest detail. They use terms like polyethylene terephthalate easily, and they know how it fits into the manufacturing process, as well as how it affects the environment. The company makes the new biodegradable bottles out of pre-forms manufactured out of common plastic with a new proprietary additive mixed in. The additive, which falls into the chemical category of metal salts, allows natural bacteria and fungi to break the down the plastic into organic material. Ultraviolet light will help the plastic to biodegrade, unless it is buried more than four feet deep in a landfill.
After they come out of the blow-molding machine, finished bottles are ready to be filled with spring water.
The Dunkls say the scientists who developed the additive found at first that it worked too well.
"They've put an inhibitor in the formula," said Frank Dunkl. "They don't want it to biodegrade on the store shelf. If the bottle is dumped in a landfill, and it is near the surface, it will get both ultraviolet light and heat, and it will break down."
Biodiversity gap
The Dunkl family believes that small, independent bottlers may adopt biodegradable bottles, but they have little faith that the largest companies will.
"When a bottle goes out the door and ends up being composted, there's no money coming back to the bottler," Frank Dunkl said. "I honestly don't believe biodegradable bottles are going to be embraced by the industry. I think that small companies, who do have their heart in the community and are concerned about the ecology, will enthusiastically embrace it. But the big companies, I have no hope."
The first customer on the list for Chilmark Spring Water packaged in biodegradable bottles is Cronig's Market, one of the company's most loyal and enthusiastic customers. But the first bottles off the line are not destined for a store shelf.
"I'm certainly going to put a bunch of them in the compost pile," said Frank Dunkl. "I'm going to make sure. We're going to monitor their progress, and verify. If they don't break down in a year, if we don't see some serious biodegradation in a year, we're going to start to make some noises."
