Mars, with SABIC and Huhtamaki, launched Recycled Content into Pet Food Packaging to Maintain a Circular Economy

Recycled Plastic for Pet food

• Working with SABIC and Huhtamaki, Mars will add food-grade recycled plastic in the packaging of pet food brands in 2021.

• The company has plans to spread to other brands in the following year.

• This vital step helps stimulate Mars’ progress towards obtaining 30% recycled content and 25% less virgin plastic by 2025.

• Chief Sustainability and Procurement Officer Barry Parkin describe milestone as “supporting the development of recycling systems in maintenance of a circular economy, where no packaging becomes waste.”

Incorporate Recycled Polypropylene Plastic

Today, Mars declared it would incorporate recycled polypropylene plastic into the original packaging for some of its famous pet food brands. For Mars, this signifies an essential step in its struggles to reduce virgin plastics use across its packaging briefcase, to do its part to build a circular economy where no packaging becomes waste.

During its partnership with global packaging supplier Huhtamaki and petrochemical leader SABIC, Mars will work on recycled plastic produced using an advanced recycling process for its pet food packs. Thankfulness to this process, the boxes will not feel different from those made with traditional virgin plastic. However, they will have the added benefits of involving recycled material arising from previously used plastic products.

Certified Circular Polypropylene

SABIC’s recycling strategy to make its certified circular polypropylene is one of the only possible solutions that can take mixed, used plastic that is oppositely hard to recycle via traditional recycling routes and change them back into plastic suitable new food-grade recycled packaging. Mars manages this in Europe in 2020 and will grow volumes used into 2021 to extend recycled content to different brands. 

Barry Parkin, who the Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer at Mars, Incorporated, said: “Plastic packaging scattering our land and oceans is not adequate, and at Mars, we’re dedicated to helping address this problem. We need to defeat packaging we don’t need, redesign the remaining packaging to become circular and invest in closing the loop to help estimate up recycling systems.

“Within our partnership with Huhtamaki and SABIC, we will test-and-learn, progressively scale up recycled plastic content in our packs, and eventually help drive circular packaging systems.”

The recycled material is approved under the ISCC PLUS (Institute of Sustainability & Carbon Certification) scheme that applies a “mass balance” approach.

This broadly recognized international sustainability certification scheme supports recycled plastic’s status and authenticity along the supply chain from feedstock to the closing product. 

The assistance comes from Mars’ Sustainable Packaging Plan and objectives to use 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging by 2025. Using superior recycling technology will be an instrumental part of using 30% recycled plastics and crushing virgin plastic use by 25%. 

Charles Héaulmé, who the President and CEO of Huhtamaki, said: “We are dedicated to doing our part in build a circular economy across the value chain and partnering with others to do so. Our valuable partnership with Mars and SABIC is an excellent example of how collaboration can result in breakthroughs that deliver important progress in our mission to designing 100% of our products to be recyclable, compostable, or reusable by 2030. That unique adjustable packaging structure with recycled food-grade plastic is an important milestone on our mission towards reaching more than 80% of raw materials we use to be both renewable or recycled.”

Mark Vester, who the Global Circular Economy Leader at SABIC, said: “We are pleased to show how this collaboration with Mars and Huhtamaki displays our trust and willingness for innovation and a shared constructive and pioneering spirit. At SABIC, we are dedicated to developing new solutions to meet our customers’ requirements for increasing sustainable solutions. SABIC certified circular products from our TRUCIRCLE portfolio allow a carbon footprint decrease of 2kgs of CO2 for every kilogram of polymer produced turned from incineration. Only ongoing partnerships such as this can we show the commercial viability and sustainability contribution of advanced recycling processes to help dare the challenges our society is facing today.”

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