pladis UK & Ireland has announced it has signed the UK Plastics Pact, pledging to make all its plastic packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025.
Led by the sustainability campaign group WRAP, the Pact’s aim is to ‘rethink plastic’, both to make use of its value and to stop it damaging the environment.
pladis added it will join the On-Pack Recycling Label scheme to ensure consumers are fully informed of how and where to recycle their packaging.
The snack maker has also extended its six-and-a-half-year partnership with TerraCycle, so that all its plastic packaging across the portfolio can now be recycled through the initiative.
Flexible plastic wrappers are not collected by local UK council recycling collections, so pladis teamed up with TerraCycle in 2012 to enable consumers to recycle used wrappers. To date, millions of biscuit and cake wrappers have been diverted from landfill and recycled into items like park benches and garden equipment.
The high and lows of plastic
“In many ways, plastic is a fantastic material; it’s lightweight, keeping fuel use down during transportation, it’s durable and it keeps our food fresh, dramatically cutting down on food waste. But these same properties mean that plastic is causing extensive damage to our wildlife and oceans, so we need to make sure that it is recycled and reused, rather than ending up in the environment,” said Scott Snell, customer VP of pladis UK & Ireland.
“This is why we’re announcing a comprehensive strategy for the long-term, while at the same time taking important steps that will have an impact right now.”
He noted that 97% of British households purchase biscuits over the festive period, and the vast majority of the pladis brands contain packaging that can be recycled through the pladis/TerraCycle partnership.
“pladis has been a valued partner of TerraCycle’s for a number of years now in the UK and Ireland. Firstly for the biscuit wrapper category, and more recently it was great to see them expand the programme to cover the cracker and cake wrapper categories which was well received by consumers,” said Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of TerraCycle.
“We encourage consumers to help spread the message to friends and family that they can recycle their biscuit, cracker and cake packaging. They can do this by using one of 500 public drop off locations or signing up as a private collector on the pladis Biscuits and Snacks Recycling Program.”
Growing buy-in
Marcus Gover, CEO of the UK’s Waste & Resources Action Program (WRAP), has commended pladis for its move to join the growing list of producers – including KP Snacks, Hovis and Allied Milling & Baking, among others – to join the UK Plastics Pact.
“Through our first-of-a-kind Pact, we work together with governments, citizens and business to transform the way we make, use and dispose of plastic so that we retain its value, particularly in reducing food and drink waste, but prevent it from polluting the environment,” he said.