Berry Global collaborates with Heinz and Tesco in first of a kind recycling project

Heinz and Tesco have teamed up with packaging industry leader Berry Global and recycling technology experts Plastic Energy and Sabic to enable the recycling of soft plastics, dropped off by customers at Tesco’s in-store collection points

The snap pots for Heinz’s Baked Beanz are produced by Berry Global. Soft plastic is returned by consumers to Tesco stores, collected and then physically segregated for conversion by Plastic Energy into an optimal oil feedstock. This is combined with virgin material by Sabic to produce an alternative feedstock to manufacture virgin food-contact approved plastic pellets. These are sent to an ISCC-certified (International Sustainability & Carbon Certification) Berry Global site for manufacturing into new Heinz Beanz Snap Pots.

“This is a prime example of an innovative advancement in circular packaging design made possible by collaboration across the entire value chain,” commented Jean-Marc Galvez, president, Berry Global Consumer Packaging International Division. “This approach helps capture and reuse plastics that currently go unrecycled, to keep materials in use and out of our oceans and landfills.”

The 39% recycled plastic that the new snap pots contain was validated using the “mass balance approach” endorsed by ISCC. This makes it possible to track the amount and sustainability characteristics of materials used in the manufacturing process. The recycled material meets the requirements of food-contact safety regulations and provides a replacement for virgin polypropylene in the thin-wall pack with no compromise on processability or mechanical performance.

“We want our snap pots to be more sustainable while retaining the features that make them so popular with consumers: their convenience, handy snappable format, microwaveability and ensuring the product remains fresh,” said Héloïse Carlier, senior packaging development technologist at Heinz. “With this project and our introduction of the new Heinz Beanz Snap Pots, 22 tons of soft plastics will be recycled.”

To date soft plastic packaging has been notoriously difficult to recycle – until 2020 just 6% of the material was being recycled in the UK. Berry Global hopes this venture will inspire the wider industry to take action in tackling this issue, both in the UK and other countries across Europe.

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