Collaboration is fuelling a plastic packaging revolution

In November 2018, Amcor expanded on its public declaration of the company’s intentions, signing on to the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment to eliminate plastic waste and pollution at source. Today, more than 250 organizations have signed, including Amcor customers Danone, L’Oréal, Mars, PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company and Unilever.

In between and since those milestones, the response from colleagues, customers, suppliers, investors, partners, and environmental leaders around the world has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

We have increased the speed and intensity of Amcor’s research and development to bring more recyclable and reusable packaging to market, faster. We are creating ambitious product roadmaps with customers and for the packaging segments we serve. We are developing open innovation activities and have established a global Flexibles Sustainability Initiative to identify, assess and accelerate investment and innovation for flexible packaging.

Our customers rely on Amcor to make innovative plastic packaging. They grow and prosper with us as we develop new platforms to create recyclable and reusable packaging – like barrier films made from polyolefin-based materials and packaging with increased post-consumer recycled content.

In 2018, our polyolefin-based film breakthrough created a real alternative to PET. The new film delivers excellent performance for barrier and heat processing without compromising packaging function and product shelf-life, and it’s suitable for existing polyolefin recycling streams.

For retort packaging, it’s a first for the market and a game-changer for Amcor and our customers. Industry experts are excited by our breakthrough, selected customers are testing it on their machines, and we are energised to solve other seemingly impossible challenges on the journey to delivering on our 2025 Pledge.

In 2019, we will open a new Sustainability Centre of Excellence in Ghent, Belgium, to coordinate development of platforms that can be used to manufacture packaging across consumer goods segments, regions and Amcor’s global accounts. We will install pilot lines there to centralize innovation and technology scouting activities, test innovative technologies, and accelerate R&D.

The Sustainability Centre of Excellence will integrate with and leverage from other Amcor sites with R&D specialisms. This includes specialists in extrusion specialists in Ghent, vacuum coating in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, extrusion coating in Selestat, France, and PCR content in Mundelein, USA.

Success stories

Our partnership with customers demonstrates how Amcor will deliver on commitments to increase recyclability of packaging and the use of post-consumer recycled content – here are three examples…

Global pet food companies

Pet owners want high-quality food that is easily dispensed and stored – and quality packaging makes this possible. Dry pet-food has been contained in flexible packaging for some time and now wet pet-food is too, often in pouches made by combining plastic polymers and aluminium.

These pet-food pouches use layers of dissimilar materials to achieve high-barrier performance, long shelf life and food protection, but multi-layer packages made from materials with different chemical composition, including polyester and aluminium, are not recyclable. That’s why Amcor is collaborating with others on high-barrier, flexible pouches that are recyclable.

Amcor R&D experts are working with customers’ R&D teams on dozens of concepts and prototypes. They are already achieving breakthroughs, including a pouch design that eliminates aluminium and polyester, guarantees the same barrier performance, and is fully polypropylene based. It delivers the same shelf-life, protection, and consumer convenience, and the pouch is suitable for existing and emerging recycling streams.

Amcor is on track to convert all flexible pouch production to this new 100% recycling-ready process by as early as 2021.

Global home care company People Against Dirty

This United States-based home-care company has a reputation built on sustainability – and that includes its product packaging. It’s homecare brand, Method Home, pushes boundaries to find the most sustainable solutions. Over more than a decade, Amcor has worked with them to create a range of bottles that are developed to be recyclable and manufactured using 100 percent PCR content.

Our partnership with Method Home has created a suite of PET containers that achieve these sustainability requirements and deliver reduced carbon emissions during their manufacture. Aesthetics, strength, stackability, shape – Amcor-designed packaging meets all of Method's exacting standards, while also achieving an improved sustainability profile.

A global beverages company

Working with global beverage company, Amcor is developing rigid plastic bottles that incorporate as much recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as possible. It's a partnership that is bearing fruit, with Amcor’s new 100 percent PCR 48-ounce bottle developed for the launch of a new beverage in early 2019. The new bottle complements other products already using PCR content, including a juice drink. The partnership is focused on expanding the use of PET bottles using PCR for isotonic drinks, carbonated soft-drinks, and water, and on new products and technologies that are more energy and resource efficient to manufacture – including exciting new lightweighting technologies and a target to use PCR content as a percentage of total resin consumed over the next 10 years.

Partners for the planet

In addition to long-term partnerships with our customers on product and service innovations, we continue work with select partners who align with Amcor’s sustainability priorities. We are the core packaging partner in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative, and active partners in Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas Alliance, the Materials Recovery for the Future Initiative, CEFLEX, the Virtuous Circle and other initiatives that are helping move the world toward a more sustainable future.

These organisations are developing and implementing guidelines, commitments and shared goals that are creating alignment between material suppliers, converters, brand owners, retailers, sorting and recycling facilities, and regulators – and setting Amcor and the whole value chain on an accelerated path towards a circular economy for plastic packaging.

Shared definitions matter

As Amcor sustainability teams reviewed product portfolios and informed pathways to more recyclable and reusable packaging, it became clear that definitions of ‘recyclable’ and ‘reusable’ vary significantly around the globe.

A crucial enabler to increasing the volume of recycling-ready flexible plastic packaging is an industry-wide consensus on what 'recyclable' means and the processes required to recycle various materials. This is being accomplished by the Amcor-led ‘Project Barrier’, which contributes significant technical content and definitions relating to flexible packaging within the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment.

• Recyclable Packaging: A package or packaging component is recyclable if its successful collection, sorting, and recycling is proven to work in practice and at scale.

• Reusable Packaging: Packaging which has been designed to accomplish, or proves its ability to accomplish, a minimum number of trips or rotations in a system for reuse.
You can read more sustainability-related definitions in Amcor's Sustainability Glossary.

While there is much to do, we have already achieved a great deal. We are continuously investing in research and development for innovative packaging that uses more sustainable materials. Packaging that weighs less, so the products it contains can be delivered more efficiently. And packaging that can be recycled and reused – like much of our packaging today.

In 2018, we intensified our focus and determination to develop packaging that protects people, products and the planet. Amcor’s global team is inspired by winning for the environment. In 2019 and beyond, we'll deliver on that commitment so that the environment is better off because of Amcor's leadership and products.

Find out more about Amcor’s sustainability commitments and progress.

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