Waiākea Hawaiian Volcanic Beverages is encompassing its sustainable packaging plan beyond the bottle and on the label, becoming the first company to commercialize beverage tags printed with UV flexographic ink created with carbon-negative and algae-derived pigment. The growth was a natural size. Invention around ecologically friendly packaging has constantly been core to the brand. “Our responsibility to prioritise sustainable packing in our origin story,” expresses Ryan Emmons, co-founder and CEO of Waiākea Hawaiian Volcanic Beverages. “We creäte the brand on a multiple bottom line standard back in 2012, prioritizing sustainable sourcing, spherical packaging, and community responsibility.”
As per Emmons, Waiākea was one of the first beverage companies in North America to commercialize bottles manufactured from 100% post-consumer recycled PET, and afterwards prolonged those efforts with its OceanPlast bottle, created from recycled ocean-bound plastic. The brand has also capitalised on reformative sourcing practices and “no-empty-mile” logistics skills, and originated the Kōkua Initiative, a non-profit foundation emphasized on education, sustainability, conservation, and help for vulnerable societies in Hawaii.
Within its wider packaging determinations, Waiākea has more recently aimed its consideration to smaller packaging elements, comprising pigments, labels, and inks, as an alternative way to decrease ecological impact at scale.
Waiākea began discovering algae-based wrapping in 2018, but not primarily as an ink design. The company first explored algae biopolymers as a probable substitution for rPET, travelling overseas to visit packaging provisions and communicating with scientists and ecological specialists. On paper, Emmons expressed that the suit looked favourable. But when Waiākea measured the complete lifecycle, involving infrastructure, end-of-life materiality, and scalability, the company determined that replacing the bottle resourcing would not decrease its complete footprint at scale.
The conventional industrialized manufacture of carbon black pigments is extremely polluting and implies noteworthy greenhouse gas releases. The commercial induction of algae-based inks fits effortlessly into Waiākea’s long-term sustainability plan covering a period. The initiation of algae ink is an additional milestone on the path to creating a circular, bottle-to-bottle saving and concerning obtaining procedures.
16 June 2026
16 June 2026
16 June 2026
16 June 2026