West Sacramento company plans to make billions of more-sustainable bottle caps
A small, public company in West Sacramento believes it has built a more sustainable version of the modern, plastic bottle cap, and is preparing to manufacture them by the billions.
Origin Materials bills its caps as a more recyclable alternative to the polyethylene and polypropylene lids found in grocery and convenience stores across the world. Origin’s caps are made of PET, the same material used to make soda bottles. Co-founder and CEO John Bissell said it is “highly recyclable” and lightweight, and using the same material as the bottle makes the cap easier to recycle.
“Generally speaking, the more homogeneous your material stream is, the easier it is to recycle. By a pretty dramatic margin,” Bissell said. “Caps are a significant amount of the waste that ends up in the environment. It’s not a trivial amount.”
The company had 82 employees in the U.S. and 27 in Canada as of December, according to regulatory filings. About half of its U.S. employees are in West Sacramento, Bissell said, where Origin has labs and administrative workers.
The company was founded in 2008, and went public in 2021 by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company in a deal valued at about $1.8 billion, becoming one of the region’s few public companies.
In February, Origin began manufacturing its bottle caps at a facility in Reed City, Michigan. And on Tuesday, the company announced a deal with a Dutch manufacturer, Royal Hordijk Packaging, to make more bottle caps in Europe.
The company’s caps, Bissell said, are more effective than others at keeping out oxygen, which threatens to spoil goods like juice, dairy and coffee.
Plus, Bissell thinks Origins clear caps have an aesthetic advantage over the traditional opaque styles.
“Human beings like to buy things in clear packages, so that they can see the actual product,” he said. “People would rather look at the product than the package.”
