Anuga FoodTec 2012

Sustainable Growth Is Crucial for Business Success

That it’s not easy being green is just as true today as it was when Kermit the frog first sang those words back in the 1970s. While almost all consumers do something to help the environment, they tend to limit their involvement to activities that are easy to accomplish. As arguments for sustainability have become more main stream and issues more pressing, consumers expect companies not only to act responsibly, but to offer products and services that help them reduce their own environmental footprint as well.

Meeting consumer demand is only one reason why companies would want to examine their own environmental performance. But there are many other, equally compelling, arguments for closely examining production processes and supply chains and for driving innovation to develop products with an improved environmental profile. Every industry uses raw materials, energy, water, and other resources and every company generates waste. Managing each of them efficiently will improve profitability as well as environmental performance. That’s exactly why sustainable business practices are such an important part of Tetra Pak’s business strategy: they help drive business performance and are set to increase competiveness in an ever more challenging market place, both for Tetra Pak and its customers. By designing with the environment in mind, Tetra Pak is focusing its innovation processes and offering solutions that significantly improve environmental performance.

While consumers agree that carton packages are environmentally the best option in the market, they do expect more. Recycling remains the most important packaging issue for consumers. And we are committed to addressing it. We have doubled the global recycling rate of used cartons in the last decade and are committed to achieving the same increase by 2020. We’re doing this by engaging every stakeholder involved: local governmental agencies, paper mills, non-governmental organisations, the scientific community, customer and retailers, and not least consumers. We aim to almost triple the amount of cartons recycled in 2020, from 35 billion tons in 2011 to over 90 billion tons in 2020.

Making sure natural resources are sustainably managed is increasingly important to maintain access to raw materials in the future, and the use of certified paperboard ensures that forests continue to grow and thrive. It is Tetra Pak’s ambition to use only paperboard certified by the Forest Stewardship Council™ (FSC™), the most rigorous certification standard. In an effort to reach 100 percent renewable content in our packaging we just started manufacturing some of our closures from sugar-cane derived polyethylene.

Cleaning up in front of our own door step has meant establishing tough targets and programmes throughout our company and beyond. Tetra Pak’s 2020 climate goal includes not only Tetra Pak’s own operations, but also takes into account CO2 emissions of our suppliers, customers, and the end-of-life handling of used cartons. The goal is to make our entire value chain more efficient and competitive. By making it easier for consumers as well as our clients to be green, we deliver on our promise to protect what’s good. Today, good business means being efficient and creating sustainable growth.

Visit us at At Anuga FoodTec to learn about the latest developments in “green” packaging solutions by Tetra Pak that will continue to support the sustainable growth of your company.

Read more about Tetra Pak's environmental focus and our climate goal

Read press release Tetra Pak research shows surge in environmentally conscious behaviour by global consumers

Go to the Tetra Pak at FoodTec webpage