Swiss-Swedish Tetra Pak, a world-leading processing and packaging solutions company, has released the 2021 sustainability report, according to a recent press release. The report documents the company’s journey to accelerate carton package recycling at scale globally, as well as to innovate to create the world’s most sustainable food package – a carton made fully of renewable or recycled materials, fully recyclable, and carbon neutral.
Responsible industry leadership and a sustainable approach to business are at the core of Tetra Pak’s business. The company is committed to making food safe and available, everywhere, and promises to do that in a way which “Protects What’s Good”: protecting food, people, and the planet. Tetra Pak works with customers and suppliers to provide safe, innovative, and environmentally sound products that each day meet the needs of hundreds of millions of people in more than 160 countries while being socially responsible — with clear ambitions and commitments on all three areas: food, people, planet.
Tetra Pak has long taken a value chain approach, recognizing that a more sustainable future can only be created by addressing the interconnected nature of the environmental, social, and economic challenges. This combined approach is also implemented in the way the company works together with relevant stakeholders across the value chain to support the collection, sorting, and recycling of packaging. With the ambition to create a world where all packages are collected, recycled, and never become litter, Tetra Pak has been joining forces with food manufacturers, municipalities, recyclers, and other stakeholders across the industry to improve recycling infrastructure in all of the markets it serves. Through these partnerships, the company implemented a wide range of activities across the recycling value chain in local markets around the world, contributing to an increase in a global carton package recycling rate of 27% in 2020.
Fully in line with the global initiatives, Tetra Pak Thailand supports the long-term ambition in accelerating the collection and recycling of used beverage cartons as a part of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) development in the Kingdom.
In 2020, the company expanded the Beverage Carton Recycling (BECARE) project which organizes the collection of used beverage cartons to produce sheets of Braille paper for donation to Schools for Blind in Thailand. The project now includes over 220 local collection points in 14 provinces in Central Thailand.
The company also achieved a major 10-year milestone with The Green Roof project for Friends in Need (“of PA”) Volunteers Foundation which collects used beverage cartons to be turned into roofing sheets donated to victims of natural disasters. The project is announced to extend for another two years, with an even stronger partnership and a wider network of volunteers.
Through the School Collection and Recycling Programme initiated by the Dairy Promotion Organization, last year Tetra Pak Thailand and industry partners collected more than 50 tonnes of used beverage cartons in over 400 schools in Bangkok.
“Packaging plays a critical role in today’s food delivery system, but it can also have an environmental cost. The solution to this problem is, of course, recycling. But to implement this solution we need to have waste management and recycling infrastructure in place,” said Patinya Silsupadol, Market Sustainability Director Tetra Pak (Thailand) Limited. “To give used beverage cartons a new life after use we all need to work together. This is why our company puts so much effort into collaborating with industry and government partners. While driving consumer awareness and engagement around recycling, we as well support collection systems and sorting technology improvements.”
