How are household brands using or reducing plastic packaging – and what does it say about brand sentiment on the whole?
We take a closer look at the five biggest brands by sales – Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Coca-Cola – to discover their attitudes and approaches towards plastic packaging in the present and future.
Nestlé
According to its Non-Financial Statement for 2025, the company operated under two main packaging targets last year: reducing its virgin plastic by one third against a 2018 baseline, and designing over 95% of its plastic packaging for recycling systems, alongside ongoing work to unlock 100% recyclable or reusable solutions.
Reportedly, the company achieved a 28% reduction in virgin plastic and designed 87.5% of its plastic packaging for recycling. This includes implementing 40.8% recycled content into its packaging.
While 89.5% of its packaging portfolio was said to be recyclable, reusable and compostable by the end of last year, this figure remains identical to the progress reported in 2024.
As reported by Bloomberg, Nestlé previously came under fire for quietly adjusting the wording on its website to target 100% designed-for-recycling plastic packaging, not necessarily recyclable, by 2025. A spokesperson told the publication that infrastructural barriers were holding the company back from fulfilling its original goal.
Even so, Nestlé underlines its commitment to investing in reuse and refill systems. It claims to have undergone a 0.51% increase in reusable packaging solutions last year, marking a 0.02% increase since 2024.
Among its other proclaimed commitments, Nestlé plans to help develop new packaging material and solutions; evaluate the safety and functionality of recyclable, reusable, biodegradable and compostable packaging formats; work to improve existing circular economy infrastructure and address plastic waste in the environment; and incorporate consumer engagement into on-pack communications, collection points, and more.
Elsewhere in the statement, the brand sets out its Golden Design Rules. Modelled on the Consumer Goods Forum’s rules of the same name, the list sets out a guideline to help Nestlé design its packaging for recyclability and minimize its use of materials overall.
The Rules include eliminating ‘problematic’ or unnecessary packaging; following regional or local industry guidelines when designing for recycling and considering local infrastructure; maximizing recycled content without compromising product safety; and engaging in communication with customers on how to responsibly dispose of Nestlé’s packaging.
Nestlé has also published a Negative List – a list of materials, additives, packaging concepts, and items it expects to become obsolete based on the evolution of recycling technologies, infrastructure, and regulatory frameworks. It clarifies that these are not time-bound commitments, but an illustration of its direction and priorities.
Earlier this year, the Financial Times claimed to see footage of Nestlé chief executive Philipp Navratil blaming President Donald Trump for the brand’s perceived silence on sustainability – stating that he would consider it a “huge mistake” not to centre environmentalism in the company’s operations.
PepsiCo
Last year, PepsiCo scaled back various sustainability targets, ostensibly in response to a patchwork of plastic targets and bans across international markets.
While it had intended to design 100% of its packaging to be recyclable, compostable, biodegradable, or reusable by 2025, it predicted in its 2023 ESG Summary Overview that it would fall short of this target.
Now it has removed biodegradability from its scope and set its sights on achieving at least 97% reusable, recyclable, or compostable primary and secondary packaging in its key packaging markets by 2030.
Its recycled content target for plastic packaging has been downscaled from 50% by 2030 to at least 40% by 2035 or sooner, now applying solely to primary packaging in its key packaging markets. So, too, has its original goal to reduce virgin plastic by 20% been switched to a 2% year-on-year decrease.
While it has not released its progress report for 2025 as of this article’s publication, PepsiCo’s 2025 ESG Performance Metrics and Calculation Methodology indicate a 93% share of recyclable, compostable or reusable packaging, a 15% share of recycled content in its plastic packaging, and a 5% year-on-year reduction in virgin plastic as of 2024.
The company highlighted its work to adopt ‘market-leading’ biobased and renewable materials in 2024.
In the UK, transitioning into a recyclable paper exterior bag for its Snack A Jacks multipacks was expected to reduce the brand’s use of virgin plastic by 65 tonnes per year. Furthermore, the company implemented ‘recycle-ready’ paper bottoms for all take-home size canisters of Mini’s in North America.
PepsiCo’s Positive Packaging Outcomes Fund aspires to support internal projects in pursuit of its sustainable packaging goals. In 2024, the company established collection programmes in Mexico, Brazil, and Uganda in a bit to increase its recycling rates. Similarly, it launched a crisp packet collection programme with a recycling consortium at its offices in Plano, Texas, USA.
The company also reports its participation in setting up a voluntary extended producer responsibility programme for collecting and recycling flexible packaging in Thailand, alongside its collaboration with Intuitive AI to offer the Oscar Sort AI recycling and sortation system in high-traffic areas across the United States.
Procter & Gamble
By 2030, Procter & Gamble aspires to eliminate 50% of its virgin petroleum plastic per unit of production compared to a 2017 baseline. As of 2025, it reported its progress at 21%.
The company also stated that it had designed 80% of its packaging for recycling or reuse, marking a 25% increase in the space of five years. Due to a reported shortage in consumer access to treatment facilities and the risk of contaminated plastic recycling streams, compostable and biodegradable packaging are excluded from P&G’s packaging goals.
Non-profit As You Sow has expressed its concerns about the feasibility of P&G’s targets – suggesting that approximately 19% of the company’s packaging is made of flexible plastic, which As You Sow describes as ‘virtually unrecyclable in America’.
In its Ambition 2030 Mid-Point Progress Update, P&G concedes: “The remaining industry-wide challenges for items such as small-size packaging (less than 2 inches x 2 inches) and flexible packaging will require advancement of feasible, at-scale solutions that are not in place today and may not be by 2030.
“We currently estimate the percentage of our packaging portfolio without feasible at-scale technical solutions by 2030 to be in the low-single digits.”
To tackle these roadblocks, P&G is involved with partners and projects such as the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, The Recycling Partnership’s Film & Flexibles and Polypropylene Recycling Coalitions, WWF’s Re:Source Plastic initative, HolyGrail 2.0, the Circulate Capital Ocean Fund, Delterra, and the Bioplastics Feedstock Alliance.
In another development, the company reports that over 99% of its sites maintained zero manufacturing waste to landfill in 2025, accounting for a limited and now-resolved outage at a single location.
P&G also claims to have exceeded last year’s target to ensure that 50% of its virgin paper packaging is FSC-certified – achieving 73% in the last fiscal year. Even so, its paper practices have come into question.
Hagens Berman has filed a class-action lawsuit on the basis that P&G’s Charmin toilet paper brand uses ‘hazy’ FSC and Rainforest Alliance certifications to mislead consumers about the company’s deforestation practices. Allegedly, ‘only a fraction’ of P&G’s wood pulp is actually sourced from FSC-certified forests.
As of this article’s publication, P&G’s reply is pending in the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
Unilever
While Unilever previously sought to halve its virgin plastic consumption by 2025, the company revised its goal in 2024. Now the company aims to reduce its plastics by one-third by the end of this year.
Also speaking to Bloomberg, CEO Hein Schumacher explained that further progress in recycling infrastructure, alongside partners in government, retail, and the petrochemical industry, was necessary to improve the company’s responsible use of plastics. He also stated that international conflicts were taking precedence over ESG and climate targets.
In its Sustainability Statement 2025, Unilever set out its ‘reduce, circulate, collaborate’ strategy – reducing its virgin plastic, scaling the collection and processing systems to keep plastic in circulation and out of the environment, and working alongside industry partners and policymakers to increase its impact.
Most of its virgin plastic reduction so far is attributed to post-consumer recycled plastic, sourced via its business groups and network of post-consumer recyclate suppliers.
The statement goes on to indicate that Unilever collected and processed more plastic than it sold last year – partially by purchasing over 152 kilotonnes of recycled plastic for use in its packaging, but also through strategic partnerships and participation in extended producer responsibility schemes.
It highlights its work to scale alternative packaging formats and materials as another method of reducing its plastic footprint. These include its previous acquisition of the refillable deodorant brand Wild, a reusable trigger spray for Cif’s Infinite Clean all-in-one spray – a move said to have reduced plastic waste by 50% – and more than 50 reuse-refill pilots conducted in the last five years.
Unilever continues to describe hard-to-recycle flexible plastics such as sachets as an ‘industry-wide challenge’. In 2026, the company expects to update its targets and increase its focus on a transition into paper-based flexible packaging.
Additionally, the company plans to keep investing in waste collection infrastructure across various countries through initiatives such as Circulate Capital’s Ocean Fund.
Looking ahead, Unilever states its intent to keep reducing its virgin plastics and designing new packaging formats for recycling, reuse, or compostability, including a further transition into recycled and renewable feedstocks. It also plans to use targeted investments and advocacy to improve recyclability in practice and increase access to recycled content.
Coca-Cola
Back in 2024, The Coca-Cola Company lowered the ambition of its voluntary environmental goals.
While it originally sought to use at least 50% recycled material in its primary packaging by 2030, it currently plans to implement between 30% and 40% recycled material into its primary plastic, glass, and aluminium packaging by 2035 – specifically targeting between 30% and 35% recycled content for its global plastic packaging.
Furthermore, Coca-Cola’s original intent was to collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one sold by 2030. This goal was changed to collect 70-75% of the equivalent number of containers it introduces to the market every year – a revision it attributes to differences in systems, infrastructure, regulatory environments, and consumer behaviours between different countries and states.
Another previous target was to design all its plastic packaging for recycling by 2025. Claiming that more than 95% of its packaging was recyclable as of 2024, Coca-Cola stated its commitment to finding solutions for the remaining packages.
It underlined its commitment to investing in refillable packaging where the relevant infrastructure exists, alongside its plans to collaborate with local and international partners to improve collection models, build upon its design innovations, invest in local infrastructure, and communicate with policymakers.
In a previous report, Packaging Europe took a deep dive into the top six FMCG signatories of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Global Commitment (which all the aforementioned brands have also signed). There we discovered that The Coca-Cola Company had experienced a 9.84% increase in virgin plastic since 2023.
While it reported that 99.94% of its packaging was designed to be recyclable, reusable, or compostable, this only covered 78.93% of its plastic portfolio – excluding components such as closures, labels and pre-packaged, non-refillable cups.
Even so, the Company reported that 18% of its primary consumer plastic was sourced from post-consumer recycling streams in 2024. It was also thought to offer a 1.11% share of reusable plastic packaging, with Coca-Cola getting involved in the NextGen Consortium’s Petaluma Reusable Cup Project – a city-wide trial later found to achieve a 51% return rate.
Several of the brands mentioned in this article are also members of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, which calls for a set of global, legally binding regulations to tackle plastic pollution while delivering economic, environmental and social value at a national and global scale.
Coca-Cola has also been involved in its own plastic-related controversies. Alongside Nestlé, the brand was accused by the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and its members of misleading consumers with inaccurate statements on their plastic beverage bottles, including ‘100% recycled’ and ‘100% recyclable’.
It was argued that these statements only applied to certain components of the bottle; not to the caps, inks, colourants, or adhesives, for example, which were believed to impact the actual recycled content of a bottle but were ‘rarely, if ever’ mentioned on labels.
Coca-Cola subsequently committed to revisiting its product labels and marketing materials, including its use of ‘green’ imagery and symbols.
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