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PackagingSustainability

Packaging

Kraft Heinz wants European ketchup bottles to be recyclable as new food packaging

Heinz Tomato Ketchup bottles switching to single-material PET for circular economy goal

By Rose Shilling
Heinz Ketchup bottle

The Europe, Heinz Ketchup bottles are switching to 100% PET, meaning they can be recycled into plastic that’s useable for new food containers.

Photos courtesy of the Kraft Heinz Co.

Kraft Mac and cheese

One environmental social governance goal for Kraft Heinz is to improve packaging information transparency, including front-of-pack nutrition labeling and product details on www.smartlabel.org. 

Heinz Ketchup bottle
Kraft Mac and cheese
October 14, 2020

Heinz Tomato Ketchup bottles in Europe will soon be made of one type of plastic so they can be recycled into food-grade PET.

The commitment for a “fully circular” ketchup bottle is among recent sustainable packaging goals from the Kraft Heinz Co.

The bottles now are multilayer with a barrier. “Our packaging engineers are able to remove that barrier layer to make the bottles monolayer, and thus capable of being made back into food-grade packaging, or a new Heinz PET Tomato Ketchup bottle, for example,” says Jonah Smith, global environmental social governance lead.

The company is trying to make all packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025—reaching about 70% in 2019. Packaging changes are part of a wider sustainable development plan with goals for the environment and healthy communities.

The company is designing packaging that incorporates more recycled and recyclable materials, working with an environmental consultant to understand how much of its packaging meets its goal.

From 2017 through 2019, Kraft Heinz cut about 13 million pounds of packaging across brands including Lunchables, Kool-Aid and Miracle Whip. A large portion came from reducing shipping packaging, tray heights and dividers.

In recent years, lightweighting evaluations resulted in a new, lighter sauce cap that saves 24 tonnes of plastic a year and incorporation of a regrind material from recycled industrial plastic into new sauce bottles (up to 5%), saving about 100 tonnes of plastic annually.

KEYWORDS: bottle packaging design packaging materials recycling sustainable packaging

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Rose shilling author

Rose Shilling is a previous managing editor of Food Engineering Magazine. She wrote feature stories on a variety of topics and tracked the food packaging industry. A journalist with an editing background at news services and newspapers, she also has driven editorial projects in health care and higher education.

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