Manufacturing Amcor has
pledged to ensure all its packaging is recyclable or reusable by 2025.
“We launched a programme around greenhouse gas emission reduction a little more than ten years ago, but it wasn’t really front and centre for the business. Now I would say sustainability is a core part of our business.”
16.3
The number of oil barrels that be saved with one tonne of recycled plastic and avoid using 30 cubic yards of landfill space.
University of Stanford 6 gigatonnes
The amount that recycling could cut carbon emissions by 2050.
University of Colorado 74
broader zeitgeist around climate change, it should come as no surprise that insiders are leaping to the challenge, partnering with customers to develop packages that elegantly blend efficiency with a slim environmental footprint. Not that finished products are the way for companies to burnish their green credentials. With the fast-moving consumer goods packaging supply chain worth nearly $100bn, there are plenty of opportunities for manufacturers eager to clean up their third-party relationships. From there, some of the most ambitious packaging companies are taking an even more holistic approach to sustainability, with happy consequences for producers, consumers, and the planet at large. This is also in part to using the right equipment, which can improve efficiency and provide economies of scale in production.
Packing it in
If you want a sense of how packaging companies have transformed their thinking about recycling and sustainability as a whole, you could do worse than talk to David Clark. He’s worked in plastic for almost 20 years, for the past ten serving as the head of
sustainability at packaging giant Amcor. Over his time climbing to the top of his field’s corporate ladder, in other words, Clark has had ample opportunities to reflect on how it’s changed its approach to the environment – and he says it’s been a revolution. “It’s changed dramatically in the last ten or 15 years,” he stresses. “We launched a programme around greenhouse gas emission reduction a little more than ten years ago, but it wasn’t really front and centre for the business. Now I would say sustainability is a core part of our business.” That’s clear enough if you explore what Amcor is doing. From its tentative work on greenhouse gases, the Zurich-headquartered company now vaunts a pledge to ensure all its packaging is recyclable or reusable by 2025. That’s flanked by a range of similar promises, involving everything from sustainability reports to independent progress verification. Nor is David Clark’s employer, one of the biggest of its type on earth, particularly special. Take even a cursory look at what its competitors are doing, in fact, and it becomes obvious that Amcor’s own march towards a green tomorrow is part of a much wider trek. At Coca Cola, for instance, the company now aims to recycle the equivalent of every can or bottle it sells. Nestlé, for its part, has so far cut four million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, even as it reduces waste and cleans waterways. This frantic activity isn’t especially hard to understand. Quite aside from the environmental pressures at play – one study suggests recycling could cut carbon emissions by over six gigatonnes by 2050 – Clark argues that sustainability is a business necessity nowadays. “We’re responding to the demands that we see from our customers, who are principally consumer brands,” he says, adding that both what goes into Amcor’s packaging and what happens after it’s used is a major concern. Certainly, this point is echoed by the statistics. Over three in four consumers now believe recycling is important. With figures like that floating about, it’s little wonder Amcor and its clients feel the need to follow suit.
These market considerations, for their part, are shadowed by legislative ones. “Whether they’re in place for us, or for packaging or brands further down the line, we are seeing more and more government engagement and regulation,” Clark emphasises. “Some of the examples of that are producer responsibility, which has been in place in Europe for quite a while but tends to be increasing in focus.” That’s shadowed, Clark adds, by similar moves across the Atlantic. Following on from its ad blitz two decades ago, for instance, California recently announced that packaging makers would be expected to pay for recycling, as well as cut or eliminate single-use plastic packaging.
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
Amcor
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
