PepsiCo has announced it will financially support the expansion of GreenDot’s plastics recycling capacities.
The Germany-based group of waste management and recycling companies is currently building a sorting plant in Ennshafen, Austria, with a planned capacity to sort 100,000 tonnes of lightweight packaging a year. Last year, GreenDot acquired Synextra, a material recovering facility in Italy, as part of a strategic collaboration to prepare feedstock for chemical recycling.
The new collaboration will support growing GreenDot’s network of mechanical and chemical recycling facilities in Europe. PepsiCo will benefit from larger amounts of recycled plastics that can be used for its snacks packaging. The food company aims to eliminate virgin fossil-based plastic in all its crisp and chip bags sold in Europe by 2030.
The companies did not disclose the investment amount but said in a statement that the ‘long-term’ collaboration ‘goes beyond EPR licencing and establishes a new business model and closes the loop between waste plastic and recycled content in packaging’.
“This agreement is an important milestone for the industry. It further paves the way towards a circular economy of plastic packaging, with the support of a new type of long-term collaboration between key players of the value chain… GreenDot will invest in developing plastic packaging to packaging recycling capacities, including [chemical] recycling of polyolefins, providing needed solutions at scale for the food industry,” said Laurent Auguste, CEO of GreenDot.
PepsiCo and GreenDot already collaborate on snacks packaging with recycled content. Last year, PepsiCo launched a new packaging for Sunbites crisps with 50% chemically recycled plastic film packaging in the UK and Ireland. It said it plans to introduce the packaging to new markets.