The Kraft Heinz Company announced aims to make 100 percent of its packaging globally recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025 as it supports the move to a circular economy.
“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.
“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.”
The company will partner with packaging experts, organisations 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, it says.
Kraft Heinz recently exceeded its commitment to reduce the weight of its global packaging by 50,000 metric tonnes. Kraft Heinz Europe is also 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.
Kraft Heinz will further outline its strategy and timeline for achieving this commitment in its next CSR Report, expected to be issued in 2019, it says.
