If you're eco-conscious but a habitual drinker of bottled water, you've likely had a dilemma to overcome. Plastic beverage bottles (usually made from PET, or polyethylene terephthalate) are some of the worst offenders when it comes to non-biodegradable material building up in landfills. By some estimates, today's plastic bottles could last 500 years or more before they finally begin to decompose. A plastic bottle put in a landfill during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England (yes, I know they didn't have plastic in the sixteenth century, but bear with me for the sake of example) would only be starting to biodegrade today.

Many “green” consumers have taken to drinking ordinary tap water, perhaps using a faucet-installed filter, or refilling aluminum water bottles from drinking fountains. All very good, but what happens when you're a habitual soda drinker? It's not like there's a Crystal Rock bottle of Mountain Dew in your workplace kitchen.

Speaking of Mountain Dew, its owner, PepsiCo, may have come up with a solution for the eternal plastic bottle: a 100 percent plant-based, biodegradable plastic bottle. GizMag recently reported that PepsiCo has developed what it's calling the world's first “PET-like” plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based (so...fully renewable and biodegradable) resources including switch grass, pine bark and corn husks. “The bottle not only offers a significantly reduced carbon footprint compared to petroleum-based PET, but is also 100 percent recyclable,” notes GizMag.

Even better? In the future, the company plans to manufacture the plant-based plastic bottles from biomass leftover from its snack food business (PepsiCo owns the Frito-Lay brand). Said the company in a press release, it plans to “broaden the renewable sources used to create the 'green' bottle to include orange peels, potato peels, oat hulls and other agricultural byproducts from its foods business.” (So you can perhaps feel a little less guilty about eating that bag of Cool Ranch Doritos for lunch?)

“This breakthrough innovation is a transformational development for PepsiCo and the beverage industry, and a direct result of our commitment to research and development,” said PepsiCo Chairman and CEO, Indra Nooyi. “PepsiCo is in a unique position, as one of the world's largest food and beverage businesses, to ultimately source agricultural byproducts from our foods business to manufacture a more environmentally-preferable bottle for our beverages business – a sustainable business model that we believe brings to life the essence of Performance with Purpose.”

So how does it work? PepsiCo says it has identified methods to create a molecular structure that is identical to petroleum-based PET (polyethylene terephthalate), which results in a bottle that looks, feels and protects the product in an identical manner to existing PET beverage containers.

PepsiCo will pilot production of the new bottle in 2012. Upon successful completion of the pilot, the company intends to move directly to full-scale commercialization, said the company.