Kraft Heinz aims for 100 percent recycled packaging by 2025
As part of its commitment to reduce natural resource needs and manage overall environmental footprint, The Kraft Heinz Company has expanded its environmental strategy to include time-bound targets for achieving greater packaging sustainability and setting science-based goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Specifically, Kraft Heinz supports the move toward a circular economy and aims to make 100 percent of its packaging globally recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025. This announcement, a complement to its ‘Growing a Better World’ strategy, supports the company’s efforts to improve the sustainability of its supply chain.
‘Our collective industry has a massive challenge ahead of us with respect to packaging recyclability, end-of-life recovery and single-use plastics,’ said Bernardo Hees, CEO at Kraft Heinz. ‘Even though we don’t yet have all the answers, we owe it to current and future generations who call this planet ‘home’ to find better packaging solutions and actively progress efforts to improve recycling rates. That’s why Kraft Heinz is placing heightened focus on this important environmental issue.’
Kraft Heinz will aggressively pursue technical alternatives while also collaborating externally to advance its commitment to deliver 100 percent recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2025. The company will partner with packaging experts, organizations and coalitions to explore technical, end-of-life and infrastructure solutions, and is already collaborating with Environmental Packaging International (EPI) for consulting, tracking and other specialist services in the packaging space. The company also will work toward increasing the usage of recycled content in its packaging and decreasing the overall volume of packaging used.
While the global packaging target is new, Kraft Heinz is no stranger to advancing the sustainability of its packaging. Evidenced by previous work in this space, the company has been working for years to optimize its high-volume packaging. For example, Kraft Heinz recently exceeded its commitment to reduce the weight of its global packaging by 50,000 metric tonnes. Additionally, Kraft Heinz Europe is working to make the recyclable Heinz Tomato Ketchup PET plastic bottle fully circular by 2022, by using recycled material that can be made back into food-grade packaging.
In addition, Kraft Heinz is doing its part to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy by working to set science-based greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals in its supply chain. Adoption of these aggressive targets is aimed at helping avoid a global temperature increase of more than two degrees Celsius.
Added Hees: ‘We found that most of our emissions are coming from areas outside our direct operations. To truly succeed as champions of sustainability, we will look at our full value chain and determine where we can make the greatest impact for our planet.’
