We’re Expanding Our Environmental Commitments to Include Sustainable Packaging and Carbon Reduction
At Kraft Heinz, we’re excited to announce that we aim to make 100% of our Packaging Recyclable, Reusable or Compostable by 2025, increase usage of recycled materials, and pledge to set science-based emissions reduction targets.
As part of our commitment to reduce natural resource needs and manage overall environmental footprint, we’re expanding our environmental stewardship strategy to include time-bound targets for achieving greater packaging sustainability and setting science-based goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Specifically, we support the move toward a circular economy and aim to make 100 percent of our packaging globally recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025. This announcement, a complement to our Growing a Better World strategy released in last year’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report, supports broader efforts to improve the sustainability of our 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.”
We will aggressively pursue technical alternatives while also collaborating externally to advance our commitment to deliver 100 percent recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2025. We’ll partner with packaging experts, organizations and coalitions to explore technical, end-of-life and infrastructure solutions, and are already collaborating with Environmental Packaging International (EPI) for consulting, tracking and other specialist services in the packaging space. We also will work toward increasing the usage of recycled content in our packaging and decreasing the overall volume of packaging used.
While the global packaging target is new, we are no stranger to advancing packaging sustainability. Evidenced by previous work in this space, we’ve been working for years to optimize our high-volume packaging. For example, we recently exceeded a commitment to reduce the weight of our 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.
We will further outline our strategy and timeline for achieving this commitment in the next CSR Report, expected to be issued in 2019.
In addition, Kraft Heinz is doing its part to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy by joining the Science Based Targets Initiative and working to set science-based greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals in its supply chain. Adoption of these particularly aggressive targets is aimed at helping avoid a global temperature increase of more than two degrees Celsius.
Added Bernardo: “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.”
We plan to announce these new science-based goals when the current commitments expire in 2020.
For more information on our sustainable business practices, please visit: http://www.kraftheinzcompany.com/sustainability.html.
