Coca-Cola Uses Captured Carbon Dioxide to Make Bottled Water Sparkle

Sparkling water is a cool, refreshing way to get your fizz fix. Now there's a sparkling water you can buy that's doing something to help fight atmospheric CO2.

Valser, one of the many brands bottled by Coca-Cola in Switzerland, has started carbonating its sparkling mineral water using captured carbon dioxide.

Earlier this year, Coca-Cola joined forces with Climeworks, a Swiss startup that's building large-scale carbon capture equipment.

Climeworks' clever removal system utilizes waste heat to suck in air and chemically trap CO₂ in a filter. Once a filter reaches the saturation point it's heated to 100C, which is hot enough to dissolve the chemical bonds holding the CO2 in place.

It's then pumped into insulated storage tanks that Climeworks can distribute to its customers, like Valser.

This is a very cool development from an environmental standpoint. The fact that Climeworks has been able to ink a deal with a company of Coca-Cola's stature shows that there's significant demand for its capture technology.

The more demand there is for Climeworks-produced CO2, the more of its modular plants the company can deploy. The more plants Climeworks deploys, the bigger the dent it can put in atmospheric CO2 levels.

Coke probably wasn't motivated by sustainability concerns alone. There was added incentive to team up with Climeworks.

Europe (and Mexico) experienced a rather serious CO2 shortage last year. The timing was especially bad — its peak came right around the time that the World Cup was taking place. Locking down an alternative supplier probably seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.

This is the second big environmental news to come out of the Valser operation this year. In the Spring, the company completed a solar installation that supplies power to Valser’s mineral water operation and about three dozen homes.