Mars Inc. Introduces Recycled Plastic into Pet Food Packaging

MCLEAN, Va.-- Mars, Incorporated has announced it will incorporate recycled polypropylene plastic into the primary packaging for some of its popular pet food brands. For Mars, this marks an important step in its efforts to reduce virgin plastics use across its packaging portfolio, to do its part to build a circular economy where no packaging becomes waste.

Through its partnership with global packaging supplier Huhtamaki and petrochemical leader SABIC, Mars will use recycled plastic which has been manufactured using an advanced recycling process for its pet food packs. Thanks to this process, the packs will not feel or be different from those made with traditional virgin plastic, but will have the added benefits that they include recycled material coming from previously used plastic products.

The recycling approach used by SABIC to make its certified circular polypropylene is one of the only solutions currently available that is able to take mixed, used plastic that is otherwise hard to recycle via traditional recycling routes, and to transform them back into plastic suitable for new food-grade recycled packaging. Mars is piloting this in Europe in 2020 and will increase volumes used into 2021, with ambitions to expand the use of recycled content to other brands.  

Barry Parkin, Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer at Mars, Incorporated, said: "Plastic packaging littering our land and oceans is not acceptable, and at Mars, we're committed to helping address this problem. To do this, we need to reduce packaging we don't need, redesign the remaining packaging to become circular and invest to close the loop to help scale up recycling systems.

"Through our partnership with Huhtamaki and SABIC, we will test-and-learn, progressively scale up recycled plastic content in our packs, and ultimately help drive circular packaging systems."

The recycled material is certified under the ISCC PLUS (Institute of Sustainability & Carbon Certification) scheme that uses a "mass balance" approach.  This widely recognized international sustainability certification scheme verifies the quality and authenticity of the recycled material along the supply chain from feedstock to final product. 

The partnership comes as part of Mars' Sustainable Packaging Plan and ambitions to use 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging by 2025. Using advanced recycling technology will be an instrumental part to achieving use of 30% recycled plastics and to reduce virgin plastic use by 25%. 

Charles Héaulmé, President and CEO of Huhtamaki said: "We are fully committed to playing our part in building a circular economy across the value chain and partnering with others to do so. Our strategic partnership with Mars and SABIC is a great example of how collaboration can result in breakthroughs that deliver significant progress in our journey to designing 100% of our products to be recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2030. This new flexible packaging structure with recycled food-grade plastic is an important milestone on our journey towards achieving more than 80% of raw materials we use to be either renewable or recycled."

Mark Vester, Global Circular Economy Leader at SABIC, said: "We are proud to show how this collaboration with Mars and Huhtamaki reflects our trust and willingness for innovation and a shared constructive and pioneering spirit.  At SABIC we are committed to developing new solutions to meet our customers' demands for increasingly sustainable solutions. SABIC's certified circular products from our TRUCIRCLE™ portfolio offer a carbon footprint reduction of 2kgs of CO₂ for every kilogram of polymer produced diverted from incineration. Only through partnerships such as this can we prove the commercial viability and sustainability contribution of advanced recycling processes to help confront the challenges our society is facing today."

This work is part of Mars' mission and responsibility to help create a healthy planet on which all people can thrive – a belief that's at the heart of the Mars' $1 billion Sustainable in a Generation Plan.

For further information on Mars' approach to sustainable packaging, visit https://www.mars.com/sustainability-plan/healthy-planet/sustainable-packaging. 

ABOUT MARS, INCORPORATED
For more than a century, Mars, Incorporated has been driven by the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. This idea is at the center of who we have always been as a global, family-owned business. Today, Mars is transforming, innovating and evolving in ways that affirm our commitment to making a positive impact on the world around us.

Across our diverse and expanding portfolio of confectionery, food, and petcare products and services, we employ 130,000 dedicated Associates who are all moving in the same direction: forward. With $40 billion in annual sales, we produce some of the world's best-loved brands including DOVE^®, EXTRA^®, M&M's^®, MILKY WAY^®, SNICKERS^®, TWIX^®, ORBIT^®, PEDIGREE^®, ROYAL CANIN^®, SKITTLES^®, BEN'S ORIGINAL™, WHISKAS^®, COCOAVIA^®, and 5™; and take care of half of the world's pets through our nutrition, health and services businesses, including AniCura, Banfield Pet Hospitals™, BluePearl^®, Linnaeus, and VCA™.

We know we can only be truly successful if our partners and the communities in which we operate prosper as well. The Mars Five Principles – Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom – inspire our Associates to take action every day to help create a world tomorrow in which the planet, its people and pets can thrive. The Mars Compass, inspired by the Economics of Mutuality, is used to measure the company's progress in service of its purpose; The world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today.