We continue to see brands pledging to make their products more sustainable and environmentally friendly, such as Starbucks and McDonald's vision of a compostable, recyclable cup. Another huge name just announced an expansion of its own environmental strategy: Kraft Heinz aims to make 100 percent of its packaging globally recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2025, per a press release.
The company plans to partner with packaging experts, organizations, and coalitions to explore technical and infrastructure solutions. Heinz also intends to increase its use of recycled content in packaging, while decreasing the overall volume of packaging used.
According to Bloomberg, Caroline Krajewski, head of global corporate reputation for Kraft Heinz, says the goal could mean major changes for some of Heinz's most well-known products. It's not looking good for ketchup packets. Those, along with multi-laminate Capri Sun juice pouches, and the packaging of individually wrapped Kraft Singles cheese cannot be easily recycled through regular programs. The multi-laminate packaging uses foil and plastic, which isn't easy to separate. Ugh, my childhood!
Caroline told Bloomberg, "Everything is on the table. We have a tough road ahead of us on certain packaging types, and there are issues where we'll have to band together with third parties and industry coalitions because no one of us can progress change in that area by ourselves."
Heinz redesigned the squeezable foil-and-plastic ketchup packet in 2010 (after 50 years!) to be a larger "dip and squeeze" container, which reduces waste but cannot be recycled because of its film cover, Bloomberg reports. So where do they go from here?
Caroline says new ketchup packaging will have to balance sustainability, food safety requirements, shelf life, distribution, cost, and appearance. Alternatively, Heinz could develop a way to make the current dip & squeeze cups more recyclable or compostable.
The company seems determined to come up with innovative solutions. Caroline told Bloomberg, "We're really entering brand-new territory here. We now have this seven-year runway to create a new solution. Where a technical solution does not exist, we'll need to find one."
It will certainly be interesting to see how packaging evolves to meet new environmental standards! Looking forward to seeing the ketchup packets (or Heinz's alternative) of 2025.
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