Our goal
We strive to develop safe and wholesome packaged foods using the most efficient, appropriate and responsible packaging materials available. At the same time, we want to satisfy consumer requirements and expectations.
Our responsible packaging solutions should:
- Result in the lowest possible weight and volume
- Take into account new materials and processes that contribute to environmental sustainability
- Use materials from sustainably-managed renewable resources whenever it makes sense
- Avoid the use of substances that don’t contribute to responsible production and disposal
- Decrease waste at all stages, including manufacturing, utilization and disposal
- Increase the use of recycled materials wherever possible
- Increase the recyclability and compatibility of packages with existing waste management schemes
- Support initiatives to recycle or recover energy from used packaging
The future
NESTLÉ has a global Research and Development program which continues to advance technology in the service of environmental sustainability. We are proud of the progress we have made over the last couple of decades, and we look forward to making further breakthroughs in the next few years to come.
BACK
Our contribution
Our first formal Source Reduction Programme on packaging began in 1991. Since then, we have reduced packaging materials by more than 390,000 tonnes. This in turn has allowed us to decrease our carbon dioxide output by more than one million tonnes. Such an amount of carbon dioxide would require more than 3100 km2 of forest a year to absorb.
Non-renewable energy saved adds up to more than 22 million gigajoules of energy, or, to put it more simply, the amount of energy, which would be required to drive more than 380,000 passenger cars for a year.
During 2007 and 2008, we selected an “eco-design tool” to evaluate the environmental sustainability of our packaging. This tool helps us to select the appropriate packaging according to its environmental footprint. All steps in the process are considered, from extraction of the raw materials needed for fabrication, through manufacturing and distribution to recovery through selective collection and recycling.
Because there is no such thing as a good or bad packaging material, we analyze each case individually with the eco-design tool to see which type of responsible packaging might be best. For this reason, the appropriate solution with the best environmental performance will depend on many different elements.