Food and beverage giant Nestlé is ramping up its efforts to rein in plastic pollution, outlining plans to phase out plastic straws and hard plastics as part of a wider plan to use purely recyclable and reusable materials in its products by 2025.
Nestlé’s plans around plastic pollution and alternative materials have been gathering steam for a little while now. The world’s second largest food and drink company first announced its plans to use 100 percent recyclable and reusable materials by 2025 in April last year, and has piece-by-piece been laying out a roadmap to achieve this aim.
In December 2018 it announced plans for an Institute of Packaging Sciences to research and develop alternative materials, and it seems the company already has something to show for it.
It says that from February onwards, plastic straws will be eliminated from all Nestlé products with “alternative materials like paper” to be used instead, while new packaging designs will be rolled out to cut down on littering. Popular products like Nesquik and Smarties will also be going plastic free in 2019, while Milo will be packaged in paper-based pouches by 2020.
The company notes that 100 percent recyclability doesn’t solve the plastic pollution problem as a whole. As such, it has other ventures in the works, like an effort to target plastic leaking into the ocean in South East Asia by partnering with Project STOP, an initiative to promote sustainable and low-cost waste systems that also supports informal waste gatherers in the region’s coastal areas.
“Our broader vision and action plan outline our commitment and specific approach to addressing the plastics packaging waste issue,” says Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider.