Coca-Cola Great Britain has partnered with Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and Merlin Entertainments to promote recycling of empty plastic bottles in the country. The promotion offers consumers the chance to win VIP experiences to family attractions operated by Merlin Entertainments. The collaboration is aimed at encouraging consumers to recycle plastic bottles through reverse vending machines located at different sites, including Alton Towers Resort, LEGOLAND Windsor Resort and Chessington World of Adventures Resort.[Image Credit: © Coca-Cola Europacific Partners]
Victoria Jung, Packaging Technology Leader for P&G’s Surface Care Portfolio, discusses the company’s use of carbon-based life-cycle assessments to make its home care products and packaging more sustainable. Jung said the company uses LCA to assess products’ environmental impacts. The company’s “science-based packaging targets” for 2030 include using 100% recycled or reusable packaging and reducing use of virgin petroleum plastic in packaging by 50%.[Image Credit: © Procter & Gamble]
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Procter & Gamble is developing sustainable packaging that is also functional and convenient. P&G Director of Sustainable Development for Linen Care division Guillaume Lebert said his company aims to change consumers’ habits through innovation. The company also works to ensure that its sustainability efforts, such as its investments in waste collection and recycling infrastructure, recyclability of packaging and the increase in use of recycled plastic, are adequately communicated to consumers.[Image Credit: © Procter & Gamble]

U.K. retailer Tesco is working to reduce unnecessary plastic packaging by no longer selling multipacks of its own-label drinks. The company expects to remove 12 million pieces of plastic each year, while offering single cans at prices equivalent to those sold in multipacks. Tesco plans to remove 33 million additional pieces of plastic in the autumn by stopping plastic multipacks for children’s lunchbox drinks, energy drinks, water and fruit juices.[Image Credit: © Tescoplc.com]




Canada produced an estimated 1.89 million tonnes of plastic packaging in 2019, with only 12 percent of the total recycled, according to the Canada Plastics Pact. Details from the “2020 Baseline Report” also revealed the top 3 types of plastic packaging were PET bottles, HDPE bottles and mono-material PE flexibles in a business-to-consumer context. CPP was launched in 2021 and currently has some 90 partners supporting the organization’s efforts to eliminate plastic packaging waste and develop a circular economy for packaging in the country.[Image Credit: © Canada Plastics Pact]

McKinsey claims that Europe’s consumer goods companies can move to a circular economy worth more than €500 billion in annual revenue through “portfolio transformation, green business building, green premiums, and green operations focused on circularity”. Such a transformation will be driven mainly by a shift in consumer demand, with younger consumers leading the way with values-driven purchases. Research has revealed that around 40 percent of European consumers consider sustainability as “highly important”, while a 2021 survey showed that about 50 percent of consumers in Germany, France, and the UK have bought preowned items.[Image Credit: © McKinsey]
Ireland has signed into law the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022, which aims to promote a circular economy. The law moves the country away from a “take-make-waste” economy and encourages the use of recycled and reusable alternatives to single-use packaging. Other provisions of the law include transforming the current Environment Fund into a Circular Economy Fund and introducing a mandatory segregation and incentives-based charging system for commercial waste. The law also authorizes local authorities to use GDPR-compliant technologies to expose and prevent illegal dumping and littering.[Image Credit: © Creative Commons]
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a new law creating a producer responsibility organization to manage a collection and recycling program for printed paper and packaging in the state. The law was approved by the state legislature following a compromise deal between industry groups and environmentalists. The Plastic Pollution Producer Responsibility Act requires a 25 percent reduction in single-use plastic packaging and foodservice items by 2032. Almost half of the reduction must come from eliminating plastic packaging or from reuse and refill, rather than switching to other single-use packaging materials. The law also mandates that all single-use packaging be recyclable or compostable by 2032.[Image Credit: © State of California]
Critics are claiming that the plastics tax designed as a government policy against plastic pollution in the U.K. is failing. The policy mandates taxing companies for using any packaging with less than 30 percent recycled plastic. Increases in prices of food-grade recycled plastic and scarcity of recycled plastics have made the law’s implementation difficult while recycling proponents claim the law does not go far enough to encourage recycling.[Image Credit: © Nick Fewings]

NextLooPP partnered with thermoformed food packaging manufacturer Mannok Pack to complete full-scale packaging production trials for food-grade recycled polypropylene (PP) resins. Mannok Pack ran trial production at the company’s manufacturing facility in County Cavan, Ireland. The companies said that the 30 percent recycled packs displayed “excellent visual and processing characteristics” and minor but acceptable product variations versus virgin PP packs.[Image Credit: © NextLooPP ]

