Businesses Going Green With New Sustainable Packaging

Earlier this year, as well as in autumn last year, we wrote about the shifts happening in businesses across many sectors towards more sustainable packaging options.

Throughout 2021, many other companies have started to make this transition as well – much to the joy of all of us here at JBX PaperPak. Big brands getting behind the movement towards sustainability and circular economics is just as important as governments imposing new rules and regulations on industrial practices. So we hope this trend only continues to gain momentum and that we see more companies rethink their packaging choices.

Sustainable Packaging

One brand leading the way in the space is Ribena; after trialling new fully recyclable U-bend paper straws on their cartons in 2020, the soft drinks giant permanently replaced their old plastic straws with the paper alternative in 2021. The owner of Ribena, Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I, has said that this change will remove as many as 16 tonnes of plastic from the economy every year. 

This comes as part of the larger plan by the company to be using only 100% sustainable packaging across all their products by 2030. Another step they have taken towards achieving this was in November 2020, when they introduced new 100% recycled PET bottles with 50% smaller labels for the bottled version of Ribena.

Ribena is not alone in switching to sustainable packaging options; the fabric softener company Lenor, owned by Procter & Gamble (P&G), are set to pilot a fully recyclable paper bottle in western Europe in 2022. P&G say this will be the first bottle of its kind produced at this scale and that they are increasingly confident in the viability of paper bottles to replace plastic going into the future. Excitingly, that sentiment is shared by some of the world’s best-known brands and has been supported by the likes of Coca Cola, Carlsberg Group, The Absolut Company, L’Oréal and BillerudKorsnäs.

We return to drinks companies once again as Britvic, who own well-known drinks brands such as Robinsons, Drench and Lipton Ice Tea, announce they’ll be moving over to 100% recycled plastic. They have set themselves a target of the end of 2022 to be using 100% recycled PET for all their 500ml drinks bottles. Britvic say that this will save over 1,350 tonnes of virgin plastic from being manufactured every year.

The next big brand making sustainable packaging choices is Mars Wrigley UK who revealed they will be removing the black PE plastic liner from inside Maltesers boxes. This will make their boxes 100% recyclable while also reducing the amount of plastic waste they produce by 82 tonnes a year.

Supermarket behemoth Morrisons is also stepping up their sustainability game. The company, which is currently the fourth largest supermarket in the UK, has announced plans to extend their reusable glass milk bottle trial after receiving encouraging feedback from consumers. Morrisons ran this trial across seven of its stores in Kent and four in Sheffield and were optimistic after customers responded positively.

Under this new scheme, customers purchase their milk in glass bottles rather than plastic ones. Once they’re finished with them, the bottles are returned to the store; after the store has collected them, they are sanitised and refilled. Whereas the plastic containers that are commonplace now are used only once, these new glass bottles can be reused for at least 10 years.

This initiative will cut back on 40,000 plastic milk bottles every year just in the stores where the trial is taking place; on top of this, as the milk is locally sourced, the carbon emissions produced in stocking shelves with this dairy product will be significantly reduced. This is all part of Morrisons’ plan to reduce 50% of the plastic packaging used in their own-brand products by 2025. The steps the supermarket has taken towards this in the last 12 months alone will remove 9,000 tonnes of problematic and unnecessary plastics from the economy every year.

JBX PaperPak

This kind of positive news in sustainable packaging is what keeps us going here at JBX PaperPak. Sustainability and environmental consciousness are our most central values and guide us in every decision we make. We are happy to see some of the world’s largest companies moving towards a greener and more circular economic model, but we are still not satisfied.

At JBX, we are committed to helping bring about a shift within every sector of the global economy towards a more sustainable, responsible, circular and future-proof way of doing things. We work tirelessly to make it as easy as possible for businesses, as well as consumers, to make ethical choices and to access sustainable packaging materials.