‘We aim to create the world’s most sustainable food package’

As a leading player in the beverage carton industry, the primary purpose of the packaging produced by Tetra Pak is to protect food. To that end, although deceptively simple looking, these cartons are made up of complex, purpose-designed multi-material laminates. A one-litre Tetra Pak carton package is typically made of approximately 70% paperboard, 25% polyethylene and 5% aluminium to protect the product inside and keep it safe to consume over an extended shelf-life. The paperboard is a renewable material, ‘when responsibly sourced’ said Tetra Pak’s Vice President Climate and Biodiversity, Gilles Tisserand.

All the paperboard used by Tetra Pak comes from wood from forests certified to Forest Stewardship Council standards and other controlled sources, he explained.

The company uses plant-based polymers traceable to their sugarcane origins that come from Bonsucro certified plantations. “In addition, we made significant investments so that all our European factories are now capable of plant-based polymer coating for carton packages, while continuing development work to extend our fully plant-based offering to other products in our portfolio,” he said.

“We aim to create the world’s most sustainable food package: cartons that are fully made from renewable or recycled materials, are fully recyclable – meaning materials being recycled in practice and scale globally – and are carbon-neutral.”

Ready for the circular economy?

Beverage cartons, in brief, are a highly successful type of packaging. Yet to become the world’s most sustainable food package, says the company, further advancements are needed.

Tetra Pak is therefore continuing to explore sustainable alternatives to high-carbon, virgin fossil-based materials to enable the transition to low-carbon, renewable and responsibly sourced ones.

“For example, in 2014, we were the first in our industry to introduce a package made fully from plant-based renewable materials. Manufactured with paperboard and sugarcane-based plastic, the Tetra Rex Plant-based package is fully renewable. Today, we’ve delivered more than 3.5 billion of such packages to customers around the world,” said Tisserand. “We have also produced over 12 billion plant-based caps made from sugarcane-based polymers, ever since their launch in 2011 – another industry first - and have since then saved more than 300,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions through those products.”

Recycling, too, is a focus for the company. Beverage cartons are recyclable - as Tisserand noted, cartons, are already being collected, sorted, and recycled worldwide, at least where the requisite waste management and recycling infrastructure is in place. Through more attention for design for recycling, by simplifying the material structure of the packaging, reducing the amount of virgin fossil-based plastic used and increasing the share of paper, Tetra Pak is further expanding the recycling potential of its products.  As well,  opportunities are being actively sought out across the entire recycling value chain to improve the way in which cartons get recycled.

“We see it as a fundamental obligation to support the global and regional collection, sorting and recycling of packaging. Thanks to our long-standing commitment and a customised approach in this area, we helped to grow the number of recycling operations handling cartons worldwide from 40 in 2010 to more than 170 in 2020,” Tisserand emphasised.

In July 2021, for example, the company announced a joint investment with Stora Enso for a complete recycling solution that will triple the recycling capacity of beverage cartons in Poland and significantly improve recycling rates throughout Central and Eastern Europe, as volumes from neighbouring markets, including Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, will also be processed at the new facility.

The collected cartons will be managed in an environmentally sound manner, with full use being made of the materials derived from the recycling process as raw materials for various applications. Recycled fibres will be integrated into Stora Enso’s recycled board. The separated polymers and aluminium will be given new life in the form of different kinds of products, such as crates and foils.

Tetra Pak also is actively involved in projects aimed at advancing recyclability. The company is among the more than 85 businesses and organisations from the packaging value chain collaborating with AIM, the European Brands Association on the HolyGrail 2.0 Digital Watermarks Initiative. The project is currently working to prove the viability of digital watermarking technologies for accurate sorting.

“As a result, we are currently working on securing compliance for a potential new watermarking standard for our package portfolio,” said Tisserand.

Ultimately, the goal is to use as much renewable and recycled material as possible in the packaging developed by the company as well as accelerating collection and recycling.

“Both are key enablers in creating our carton of the future - in short, a package that has circularity and recycling “built in” – along with anti-littering measures. To bring this future package to fruition, collective action is key: every stakeholder and every step counts if we are to meet our sustainability ambitions. This is particularly relevant when considering the need for developing sustainable recycling value chains,” he clarified.

Challenges

When it comes to advancing collection and recycling, circumstances vary greatly across geographies, with different sets of opportunities and challenges, said Tisserand. He cited a number of oft-encountered challenges that need to be overcome, including the lack of waste management policy and infrastructure, specifically in middle and low-income countries where collection relies on an informal sector and waste pickers; insufficient available recycling capacity to process materials; and the limitations of the scaled recycling technologies available today, in particular regarding the ability to produce high-grade recyclates demanded for the production of, for example, food-grade plastics that would make it economically worthwhile to collect and process waste.

In that respect, Tetra Pak has sought to introduce recycled materials that meet the company’s high food safety standards, amongst others, by producing, since February 2021, carton packages incorporating attributed recycled polymers.

“We believe that, to address the challenges of recycling and scale up, a systemic approach including all steps of the chain is required, as well as greater industry collaboration,” said Tisserand.

Tetra Pak therefore works with food manufacturers, municipalities, recyclers and other stakeholders across the industry. “Collective action is key to realise our ultimate ambition; a world where all cartons are collected, recycled and never become litter. We also think that this approach needs to go further: it must also account for the carbon impact of manufacturing and, particularly, raw materials,’ said Tisserand.

Plastic Waste Coalition of Action

A case in point is the company’s membership of the  Consumer Goods Forum's (CGF) Coalition of Action on Plastic Waste, which Tisserand referred to as ‘a brilliant example in this space’. The Coalition, founded in 2020 with the aim of developing a more circular approach to the development and processing of plastic packaging in the consumer goods industry, builds on the CGF's 2018 endorsement of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's New Plastics Economy. It has now published nine ‘Golden Design Rules’ for the design of plastic packaging, created to accelerate progress towards using less and better plastic, for example, by eliminating unnecessary plastic packaging, by reducing headspace and plastic overwraps, as well as increasing recycling value in various types of plastic, including PET thermoformed packaging, flexible consumer packaging and rigid HDPE and PP. The rules also cover the use of clear and accurate on-pack recycling instructions, which will help consumers to ensure that packaging is sorted for the appropriate end-of-life solution.

Members have been asked to voluntarily commit to implement these design changes by 2025 and to report annually on progress, in a process aligned with the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment.

“Working collaboratively is critical,” said Tisserand. “And I truly believe the Golden Design Rules will accelerate progress towards using less and better plastic and build the necessary momentum for achieving the targets laid out in the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, that we signed back in 2019.

Future developments

Tetra Pak strives continuously to enhance and advance the sustainability of its product.

“As an example, a development priority for us is replacing aluminium with an alternative barrier that still protects the food inside from oxygen and light. After all, the primary purpose of our packaging is to protect food. Together with the paperboard and plastic, aluminium keeps the product inside safe to consume and protects its properties over an extended shelf-life. However, this thin layer inside our aseptic package is responsible for about a third of the climate impact of our base materials,” Tisserand elaborated.

The company introduced its first aseptic packaging solution without aluminium in 2020, with plans to progressively launch additional high-performance non-foil cartons, with increased renewable and fibre content, in years to come “with the commitment to launch a fully renewable aseptic package by 2023,” he said.

“In addition, we are working across various project streams, covering approximately 40 different tethered cap solutions, to equip our customers in Europe ahead of the regulatory deadlines in 2024. Set to become available as plant-based options, therefore increasing the renewable content of the package, tethered caps can also contribute to reduce the carton’s carbon footprint.

This will require an innovation-led approach to the development and validation of completely new technologies, but we are confident that we have the expertise and a clear line of sight to deliver on this. Furthermore, we are also investing approximately €100 million per year over the next five to ten years into the development of more sustainable packaging solutions.”

‘A full lifecycle view’

As a company, Tetra Pak has striven to substantially reduce its environmental impact in a number of ways in order to minimise its climate impact and ensure food security for the future. “We take a full lifecycle view,” said Tisserand.

Seeking to drive down carbon emissions at every step of the value chain, Tetra Pak has focused both on the decarbonisation of the raw materials used to produce its cartons by using renewable plant-based materials instead of fossil-fuel based materials, and on decarbonising production.

The company has joined forces with suppliers to minimise its carbon footprint upstream. These efforts have involved switching to renewable energy and reducing the carbon impact of the equipment used.

Moreover, by helping to reduce food loss and waste and driving recycling we can preserve resources and reduce climate impact even further, Tisserand added.

“Climate change is a complex and multi-dimensional issue which cannot be solved by one entity or one solution, but we can all contribute.”

He pointed to the emission breakdown along the value chain, which clearly reveals the importance of collective action. Based on the data from 2020, approximately 40% of emissions are generated upstream and over 50% downstream, including processing and packaging equipment operating at customer sites and post-consumer cartons not recycled or recovered for energy.

“We are on a trajectory to hit net zero emissions across our own operations by 2030, with the ambition to reach net zero across our entire value chain by 2050. As a target approved by the Science Based Target initiative across all scopes 1, 2 & 3, this means – amongst other things - reaching -46% GHG reduction across value chain by 2030, in line with a 1.5°C path. This is what the latest climate science has told us is needed to prevent the most damaging effects of climate change, and we are fully committed to playing our part,” he declared.

Will the company hit those goals?

“We have consistently delivered on our climate goals, right from the first goal set in 2002, again in 2005 and we recently outperformed our 2020 goal - to cap our 2020 impact across the value chain at 2010 levels, while growing the business.

We believe that our ability to set and demonstrate progress in line with science and societal expectations, our innovation drive and the collaborative approach across the value chain positions us on the right path to achieve our new ambition.”