Nature & climate risks
Food & beverage manufacturing
Global retailers show cutting waste & emissions via 3Rs in packaging meets sustainability goals.
Resource-depletion, supply-chain disruption and environmental risks can be mitigated via circularity in packaging.
More efficient and sustainable packaging is expected amid improvements in technology, logistics and market mechanisms.
In October 2023 the European Parliament’s environment committee voted to adopt revisions to a proposed European Union-wide regulation that establishes life-cycle criteria for packaging; the changes seek to reduce avoidable packaging and waste, make reusing and recycling packaging easier, and promote recycled content use. As governments globally espouse sustainable packaging, the world’s largest consumer-goods retailers are increasingly utilising recyclable, reusable, and compostable packaging.
Many are making their packaging more sustainable by design. Walmart Inc’s Circular Connector has enabled over 4,000 connections between packaging providers, who collectively offer over 200 sustainable packaging schemes, and private-brand suppliers. Amazon.com Inc and Cainiao Group, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s logistics unit, curb overpackaging via artificial intelligence-based package size optimisation. In 2017-22, Home Depot Inc redesigned over 1,000 packages to reduce size and materials.
Amazon.com Inc cut average plastic packaging weight per shipment by 17% year on year in 2022, using paper-based and ship-in-original-container packaging, and saved 60,000 tons of cardboard via right-size packaging. Targets to curb new-plastic use in packaging have been set by Colgate-Palmolive Co (by 33% by 2025, from 2019 levels), Procter & Gamble Co (by 50% by 2030, from 2017 levels) and Unilever plc (by 50% by 2025, from 2019 levels). All assessed companies sell goods with reusable packaging.
All evaluated retailers also seek to recycle packaging. Around 63% of Walmart Inc’s private-brand packaging was recyclable, reusable, or compostable in the fiscal year ending January 2023. Targets to only utilise reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging have been set by Colgate-Palmolive Co (2025), Unilever plc (2025) and Home Depot Inc (January 2028; in US and Canada stores), which extracts expanded polystyrene from packaging, and compresses this into blocks sold for insulation purposes.
Cainiao Group, which gave customers free eggs, tissues and rice, to return used packages, recycled 23.8m cardboard boxes in the fiscal year ending March 2023. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Home Depot Inc, Costco Wholesale Corp, Lowe’s Cos Inc, Procter & Gamble Co and Walmart Inc urge customers to leave packaging waste at their respective drop-off points. The latter four, Amazon.com Inc and Unilever plc are members of How2Recycle, a labelling programme that raises awareness about packaging disposal.
