for more than a year, the marriage of danny and teresa clark of mesa was dominated by trying to change the way products are packaged.&ldquoit was 100 percent, 24houraday thinking,&rdquo teresa clark said. &ldquowe did research to the end of the internet. there were a lot of sleepless nights, but what kept us going was the passion and drive to know that something had to be done.&rdquothe result is a recyclable, fully biodegradable plastic bottle produced by enso bottles, the clarks&rsquo mesabased company. the bottles &mdash a collaborative effort of chemists, microbiologists and manufacturers, among others &mdash are primarily used by a handful of water companies.the clarks hope to expand the bottles&rsquo reach to such products as soda, shampoo, medicine and wine.&ldquowe didn&rsquot invent anything ourselves directly,&rdquo danny clark said. &ldquowe worked with manufacturers and compounders. we were able to tweak it and bring it together to develop a product that is not only recyclable, but breaks down naturally.&rdquothe process of developing organic materials and synthetic polymers to bond with polyethylene terephthalate pet &mdash the resin typically used in plastic containers &mdash took about 18 months.danny clark said bottles that use starchbased and oxodegradable plastic break down in compost environments, but not landfills, where most nonrecycled containers end up.&ldquoit was a lot of trial and error,&rdquo danny clark said. &ldquowe tried this material and that material and ran the biodegration tests. we would do additional research to find compounds to mix together better. the issue was getting the right stuff to mix together from a chemistry perspective. there were dozens of mixtures to go through, and making it biodegradable was probably the easy part. the hard part was getting it to mix with the plastic.&rdquoamong the water companies using enso bottles are balance, aquamantra, ecoviva and project 7.martin chalk, cofounder of balance water, said his company spent more than a year looking for a suitable bottle before choosing the enso product in november.the production is still in its infancy, chalk said, and there are challenges.&ldquothe bottles are clear, but not as clear as regular pet,&rdquo chalk said. &ldquoit can vary from batch to batch. you have to get the temperature just right when you blow the bottle forms. it&rsquos still a learning curve, but over time, as biodegradable bottles become more popular, the machinery should be able to cope with it better.&ldquoit&rsquos kind of like a new printingpress process &mdash you have to have a master technician get it just right. soon, it will become more foolproof.&rdquoa recyclable, biodegradable bottle costs about two cents more to produce.&ldquothere&rsquos more steps,&rdquo teresa clark said. &ldquobut i haven&rsquot heard anyone say they were against paying 90 cents for a better bottle as opposed to 88.&rdquo tim hackertribunedanny and teresa clarkenso bottles owners danny and teresa clark who are husband and wife show off their company&39s bottles that will biodegrade only when placed into a microbial environment such as a landfill. the technology also does not impact the plastic so that it is fully recyclable along with standard recycling. 
