PepsiCo: 25 percent recycled plastic content in its packaging by 2025
29 Oct 2018 --- In a further plastic packaging pledge, PepsiCo will aim to have its packaging consist of 25 percent recycled plastic content by 2025 as part of its sustainable plastics vision. The goal includes an aim specific to PET beverage bottles – 33 percent recycled PET content by 2025. PepsiCo is also a signature of the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, announced today, to eradicate plastic waste at source and establish a circular economy for the material, led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The company also forged a partnership with Loop Industries, in a move that will boost its access to good quality, recycled PET.
The multi-year agreement with Loop Industries, a leading technology innovator in sustainable plastic, hopes to enable PepsiCo to purchase productions capacity from Loop's joint venture facility in the US and incorporate Loop PET plastic, which is 100 percent recycled material, into its product packaging by early 2020. Loop Industries emerged with a truly transformational technology that allows no and low-value plastics to be diverted, recovered and recycled endlessly into new, virgin-quality Loop PET plastic.
“PepsiCo's sustainable plastics vision is to build a PepsiCo where plastics need never become waste. We intend to achieve that vision by reducing, recycling and reusing, and reinventing our plastic packaging – and leading global change through partnerships,” says Dr. Mehmood Khan, Vice Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer at PepsiCo.
“Already, PepsiCo is one of the world's largest users of food-grade recycled PET. To further boost recycled content across all plastic packaging and drive progress towards a circular economy for plastics, it is vital to dramatically increase global waste collection and recycling rates through investment in recycling infrastructure and technology.”
PepsiCo aims to achieve this goal by collaborating with suppliers and partners, helping to increase consumer education, fostering cross-industry and public-private partnerships and advocating for improved recycling infrastructure and regulatory reform, all of which are required to realize our ambition.
“We are very proud to supply PepsiCo with Loop branded PET plastic,” says Daniel Solomita, Founder and CEO of Loop Industries. “Working with a global food and beverage giant like PepsiCo will further establish the value proposition of the Loop brand and mission – to accelerate the world's shift toward sustainable plastic and away from the traditional, take, make and dispose economy.”
As the pressure to reduce the levels of plastic waste continue to rise, a number of global players have also made significant pledges.
Nestlé has pledged to make a significant increase in the number of recycled plastics it uses in some of its packaging in the European Union. By 2025, bottles, PET layer in laminates, caps on glass jars and tins, trays for meat products and shrink films for display trays will all contain at least between 25 percent and 50 percent recycled material, depending on the packaging type.
Australian beverages manufacturer Coca-Cola Amatil has committed to making 100 percent of its Australian packaging recyclable by 2025, including all bottles, cans, plastic wrap, glass and cardboard. The company will also work towards phasing out unnecessary single-use packaging through improved design, innovation or the use of recycled alternatives.
The UK Plastics Pact has also made a number of significant pledges, and six months into the pact, a large number of results have been spawned. Read more on this topic here.
