Anchor Packaging and Pizza Hut have developed an award-winning bowl for chicken wings – designed to keep the food fresh in transit while featuring post-consumer recycled polypropylene and ensuring recyclability.
Recently featured in a sustainability report from parent company Yum! Brands, Pizza Hut’s wing bowl is said to help recyclers and brands access food-grade polypropylene on a ‘previously unattainable’ scale.
The packaging is designed to offer ‘superior’ protection while removing carbon black and excess material fillers to improve recyclability and allow the recovery of more post-consumer material.
Wings are sauced directly in the container to shorten preparation time and improve operational efficiency. Even as consumers increasingly opt for takeaway dining, they are encouraged to shake the container to recoat the wings and achieve ‘freshly made quality’.
Anchor Packaging – now part of Georgia-Pacific’s Foodservice Solutions platform – was reportedly ‘essential’ to the project’s success due to its expertise, with the wing bowl described as a ‘step forward for foodservice’.
Pizza Hut and Anchor Packaging were co-presented with the Packaging Design Innovation recognition under the Association of Plastic Recyclers’ Recycling Leadership Award.
“This recognition by the Association of Plastic Recyclers is an exciting moment for Anchor Packaging, as well as for our partner, Pizza Hut,” said Anchor Packaging president Jeff Wolff. “Together, we’ve developed and manufactured an innovative product that excels in food-to-go performance, and its recycled content paves a path to future increases in the use of recycled content by other companies.”
“Receiving this award, shoulder-to-shoulder with Anchor, affirms our commitment to advancing packaging sustainability without compromising quality or efficiency – and highlights the strength of our successful partnership,” added Kat Smith, packaging engineering manager at Pizza Hut LLC.
The Yum! Brands report also highlights that Pizza Hut has begun to phase out small plastic components, such as its pizza box lid support, and introduced on-pack messaging and digital tools to walk consumers through local recycling processes.
In other news, fellow Yum! Brands subsidiary KFC has rebranded its packaging for Tenders and sauce products in the UK and Ireland – a move hoped to give consumers more freedom to ‘mix, match and personalize’ their meals.
Bakery chain Greggs also revealed in its latest sustainability report that it achieved 100% recyclable own-brand packaging last year, minus its hot drink cups. However, it reportedly fell short of its 25% lightweighting target for packaging in 2025.
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