Materials & Packaging Materials & Packaging

New Tetra Pak Campaign Encourages Industry-Wide Commitment to Renewable Packaging

Tetra Pak has launched a campaign to raise industry awareness of the importance of the front end of the packaging life cycle — the sourcing of renewable materials — and is calling on the consumer goods industry to commit to prioritizing renewability.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 10 years ago | About a 3 minute read

Tetra Pak infographic

As part of the kick-off to the campaign, called “Moving to the Front,” Tetra Pak has also released a white paper with input from the WWF, which outlines how using renewable resources creates value that can help businesses grow.

Tetra Pak says businesses that commit to renewability practices will:

Realize business growth because long-term supply resources will be secured and retailer preference and consumer demand for packaging made with renewable materials will grow.
Manage and mitigate risks caused by geopolitical threats to sourcing more effectively, leading to a more reliable supply chain with less business disruption around supply of resources and better ability to manage costs and experience less price volatility.
Build brand equity, differentiation and emotional connections with consumers because as consumer knowledge around resource scarcity grows, so too will their demand for packaging with renewable content, as it did around recycling.

“Any actor within the supply chain who directly or indirectly relates to packaging needs to ensure the stability and sustainability of these natural resources in order to help secure business growth, better manage and mitigate against geopolitical threats to supply and build brand equity and more,” Tetra Pak says on the campaign homepage. “We want to lead a new industry commitment to what we call renewability — protecting natural resources and rewarding best practices and innovations that focus on the front end of the packaging life cycle; practices and innovations that will keep the consumer packaged goods industry strong and viable in an increasingly volatile economy.

“Renewability, as we see it, is about using a resource that can be re-grown or replenished naturally over time, so that there is enough for all, forever. And we think renewability is critical to help offset the environmental and economic strain caused by more of us using scare natural resources to make more.”

Tetra Pak says it “walk[s] the walk” as far as “Moving to the Front” goes: The company’s cartons, on average, are made of 70 percent paperboard, a renewable resource from responsibly managed forests; it has incorporated bio-based plastic caps and packaging coating made from polyethylene from sugar cane, and its goal is to offer packages made from 100 percent renewable materials.

A number of large CPG brands have taken their own initiative in this area — including Cascadian Farm, with its bio-based cereal box liners, and HP, with its straw-based packaging — and companies such as Ecovative have brought mycelium-based packaging to market.