How does Danone – the owner of leading brands like Evian, Volvic, Actimel, and Activa – approach packaging sustainability? We caught up with Irène de la Torre, the company’s Global Packaging Circular Economy Director, to learn more.
To kick things off, could you give us a general overview of Danone’s packaging sustainability goals and objectives in Europe?
Our approach to sustainable packaging is based on two complementary pillars. Our first objective is to contribute to plastic production reduction by implementing a circular and low-carbon economy approach. To reach this goal, we are working on the design of our products to eliminate unnecessary packaging elements, reduce virgin fossil plastics by using recycled materials or renewables, explore alternative materials, and develop reusable packaging solutions.
Our second objective is to ensure the plastic that cannot be eliminated is reused or recycled in practice and at scale so that plastic never becomes waste or pollution, actively supporting the development of collection, recycling, and reuse systems, such as Deposit Return Schemes for beverage bottles for example.
Yet voluntary action by individual companies is not enough and can only be one part of the solution. Only by collaborating throughout the value chain, upstream with suppliers and partners, and downstream with retailers, waste collection services and regulators, can we tackle the plastic pollution issue and drive packaging transformation.
And how are things progressing? Have there been any specific projects or initiatives that have had a particularly significant impact on Danone’s journey toward reaching its objectives?
Since 2018, date of issue of our latest packaging policy, we already made some important strides on each of our goals, reducing our global virgin plastic footprint by 70,000 tons (-10% compared to 2018), increasing the recyclability (84% of our products are either reusable, recyclable or compostable) and nearly doubling the use of recycled plastics. For example, 35% of our water bottles in Europe are now made of recycled plastic (rPET).
I could also mention several initiatives: one is about eliminating the sleeves in several of our product offers, for Danacol since 2022 and for Actimel range by the end of 2023, facilitating recyclability and saving cumulatively ~1kT of plastics each year. Or the launch of large formats for water, Volvic 8L format allows us to save -25% plastic weight per Liter compared to 1.5L format. This comes alongside continuous efforts to reduce plastic packaging weight (more than 10% on average since 2019 for our leading water brands for 1.5L product offers).
I’m sure you’ve seen the news regarding the EU’s revisions to its Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, which have been the cause of much debate in our industry in recent times. What are your thoughts on these proposals, and how do you think they will affect how Danone functions?
The future regulation is a positive step to harmonise the European market and a good signal given to the actors of the entire chain to boost infrastructures and investments in new recycling streams and technologies, that are lacking today.
The level of proposed ambition is high; we need EU legislation to provide the necessary market conditions to effectively boost these infrastructures. One of them is the mandatory Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) by 2029 which will allow people to meet beverage bottle collection targets and ensure enough feedstock for recycling to reach recycled content ambitions. EU legislation should include priority access to recycled materials for the food and drink industry, to avoid downcycling of what is called “food-grade” recycled plastics in other industries.
Could you share your viewpoint regarding the plastics versus paper debate? We’re curious if Danone leans towards one option or remains neutral on this matter.
Each material, being plastic, glass, or paper has its advantages and drawbacks in terms of recyclability and carbon footprint. At Danone, we are adapting the choice of material to each local context, always conducting a full life-cycle assessment.
Paper-based packaging is indeed one of the alternative materials we want to develop more, and we already incorporate it in our portfolio with paper-based cups for instance in France for our dairy products (under Danone, Lait 2 Vaches and YoPro brands), as well as in Alpro plant-based bricks which are packaged in beverage cartons.
What is Danone’s position on reusable packaging, and what do you think the FMCG sector could do to make the use of it more widespread?
We support reusable models and are committed to developing reusable packaging solutions, as part of our transition to circular and low-carbon economy of packaging. Today, around 50% of our water volumes worldwide are sold in reusable packaging. In Europe, we already deploy returnable glass offers for our water for HoReCa in several countries, including in France and Spain, and are running some pilots to test new returnable concepts.
Nevertheless, to effectively scale-up reuse models, we need all actors along the value chain – not only FMCG but also logistics, cleaning industry, and retailers – to adapt infrastructures, align on standards and develop new models, under the leadership of public authorities.
What can we expect from Danone’s packaging strategy heading into the future? Are there any trends that you expect to become more prevalent in the coming years?
Packaging transformation is a huge technological and industry challenge. It starts with how we design our packaging working with our suppliers to further reduce the use of packaging and their CO2 footprint as well as co-developing new technologies for paper-based packaging. We will also pursue our efforts to scale-up and maximize the use of recycled content for rPET and beyond.
For instance, we are actively supporting new technologies like carbon capture with Lanzatech or new recycling technologies, like Loop Industries to enhance closed-loop recycling for PET bottles and enable the recycling of hard-to-recycle packaging and material.
To enable a fully circular packaging system, collection will need to dramatically scale-up. We support Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) implementation across all our countries of operation. Meanwhile, in some geographies without effective waste management systems in place, we are joining forces, through Circulate Capital initiative, for example, to finance and scale the recycling value chain.
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