Circular Economy Collaboration & Co-Creation

SC Johnson, Liverpool FC Team Up to Repurpose Fan Plastic Waste

In its latest partnership with a professional sports team, SCJ will collect empty plastic bottles from each game for recycling into new Mr Muscle® bottles; as well as promote sustainability, health and hygiene.

Published 3 years ago | About a 3 minute read

Image: Tembela Bohle/Pexels

SC Johnson, maker of household cleaning brands such as Mr Muscle®, Ecover® and Duck®, today announced it has teamed up with Liverpool Football Club to create a closed-loop recycling model for the more than 500,000 plastic bottles used at the team’s Anfield Stadium each season.

From the start of the partnership, fans at Anfield will be able to place plastic beverage bottles in specially designed receptacles. SC Johnson will collect the plastic and repurpose it to create new Mr Muscle trigger bottles for the UK market.

“Plastic waste is a threat to our planet for this and future generations,” said Fisk Johnson, Chairman and CEO of SC Johnson. “At SC Johnson, we believe we all have a responsibility to solve this critical environmental issue. Our partnership with Liverpool F.C. is one of the many steps SC Johnson is taking to move forward our vision for a waste-free world as it creates another local solution to this global problem by leveraging football to help close the plastic recycling loop.”

Image credit: SC Johnson

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The new partnership, called “Goals for Change,” kicks off a series of initiatives to drive improvements in sustainability and health and hygiene, and provide pathways to greater economic and social mobility for youth across Liverpool F.C.’s communities in the UK, Asia and Latin America.

Earlier this year, Liverpool F.C. launched the Red Way — its vision for sustainability and way of supporting society now and for future generations — underscoring the importance of a like-minded partnership.

“We launched our sustainability programme the Red Way earlier this year and made a commitment to make a positive difference to our people, our communities and our planet. SC Johnson has made important step changes within their industry which have delivered incredible results through several sustainability initiatives,” says Matt Scammell, Commercial Director at LFC. “I feel very optimistic about the work we can do together through this partnership, both raising awareness and looking after the safety of our supporters and ultimately using our voices for good to help the next generation of Reds all around the world.”

In addition to recycling plastic waste at Anfield, SC Johnson and Liverpool F.C. will team up to focus on health and hygiene. As the Official Cleaning and Disinfectant Partner of Liverpool F.C., SC Johnson will provide soaps and hand sanitizers throughout the stadium and AXA Training Centre to help promote health and hygiene. SC Johnson Professional, the company’s commercial business, will work with Liverpool F.C. to establish a new standard of cleaning.

SC Johnson has committed to making 100 percent of its plastic packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable, along with tripling the amount of post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic content, by 2025. In 2019, it launched a three-year partnership with the Plastic Bank to fight poverty while stopping plastic waste from entering the ocean. The partnership has created recycling infrastructure on a massive scale across five of the countries that contribute most to ocean plastic (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil) and pays residents to collect plastic in exchange for digital savings and rewards. Once the plastic is collected and exchanged, it is recycled into Social Plastic®, which SC Johnson has been using for its Mr Muscle® Platinum Window & Glass cleaner bottles in the UK since 2020.

And this isn’t SC Johnson’s first partnership with a sports team, either: Here in the US, the company has teamed up with both the Milwaukee Bucks and the Milwaukee Brewers — it is now the Bucks’ Official Sustainability Partner and Official Disinfectant and Commercial Cleaning Partner; and, similar to its plan in Liverpool, it collects the one million plastic cups used annually at the Bucks’ Fiserv Forum and the Brewers’ Miller Park for recycling into future bottles for its Scrubbing Bubbles® brand.

Read more about SC Johnson’s efforts to minimize plastic waste here.