Carlsberg Head of Sustainability: “Eco-friendly packaging means consumer will choose our product over competition”

24 Sep 2018 --- Carlsberg reimagined beer can packaging this month with the Snap Pack: a recyclable glue that bonds multipacks of beer together and replaces the traditional bulky plastic rings previously used. The technology is set to reduce plastic waste globally by more than 1200 tons a year – the equivalent to 60 million plastic bags, according to the Danish brewery. During the Packaging Innovations show in London last week, PackagingInsights caught up with Simon Boas Hoffmeyer, Head of Sustainability at Carlsberg to discuss the SnapPack and other initiatives which make-up the company’s Together Towards Zero Sustainability project.

“Very recently, we launched several new packaging innovations,” says Hoffmeyer. “One of them was the Snap Pack. We are looking to reduce carbon in the full value chain, including what we call the ‘beer in hand’. We have a carbon reduction target of 30 percent by 2030, and one of the very key ways of achieving that reduction is through packaging.”

“The Snap Pack is quite an amazing breakthrough technology where we bond the cans together with glue rather than using plastic rings or shrink wrap, which allows us to save up to 76 percent of plastic in our multipacks. That will amount to 1200 tons of saved plastic a year once we have rolled it out across our company. It is a significant reduction we can achieve.”

“We do think the consumer will want to choose our product over the competiton if we provide packaging that is better in terms of sustainability,” he adds.

The Snap Pack is just one of Carlsberg’s sustainable packaging solutions. Other improvements include:

• A switch to Cradle-to-Cradle Certified silver inks on its bottle labels to improve recyclability.
• A new coating on refillable glass bottles to extend their lifespan and therefore reduce their environmental footprint.
• New caps which remove oxygen to make the beer taste fresher for longer.

“The Snap pack is on the shelves now in Tesco,” continues Hoffmeyer. “It is sold across 600 stores and we are doing tests to see how consumers respond to the new packaging.”

“We’re rolling out in Norway very soon and then Demark will follow in the beginning of 2019. From there we will look at additional markets as soon as we can.”

Together Towards Zero
Carlsberg’s sustainability program, Together Towards Zero, was developed over a two year period with lots of analyses, says Hoffmeyer.

“We did what we call a materiality assessment which is basically where you go and ask the outside world: which topics do you think are most important for us? We also engaged our internal business to see which areas would benefit most significantly from improved sustainability in terms of real business impact.”

“We engaged more than 7,000 employees, conducted workshops, and came out with a strategy called Together Towards Zero that has four key ambitions: to achieve zero carbon footprint; to achieve zero water waste; zero irresponsible drinking; and a zero excellent culture.”

“We must have targets to achieve these ambitions. We want to be carbon neutral at our breweries by 2030, we want to cut our water usage in half, we want to promote more responsible consumption of our products with targeted interventions in our markets, and we want to achieve zero excellence,” Hoffmeyer says.

Demand for sustainability
Hoffmeyer explains how the demand for sustainability derives from a number of sources, including the increased mindfulness of the consumer in addition to more pressing government regulations. Ultimately, though, he claims that increased sustainability "makes sense from a business perspective but also sense for the planet.”

He also moved to question the effectiveness of UK recycling systems and infrastructure in comparison to other European nations.

“In general, I believe that the UK has slightly lower recycling rates than many other European markets, so I think there is definitely work to do in the UK to improve it, both on consumer information side, but also in terms of the infrastructure that is in place.”

“That’s why for us, the Snap Pack can really help, both in terms of generated waste, but also if people do not dispose of it correctly, then the litter they create is 76 percent less. Therefore, we are helping both the consumers who recycle correctly at home but also the ones who don’t because, although we of course encourage recycling, at least then we have significantly reduced their amount of littering,” Hoffmeyer concludes.

Just recently, UK plastics recycling company Veolia called for standardized packaging which makes products recyclable by design. The call comes as it was revealed that 93 percent of UK consumers think plastic bottles should contain recycled content and would be willing to pay an average of 2.5p more. Veolia is also recommending a simplification of recycling to “remove confusion” and an increase in the use of recycled content in the manufacturing of new products.

By Joshua Poole