TETRA PAK – PROTECT WHAT'S GOOD
Company background
Tetra Pak is the world's leading food processing and packaging solutions company with presence in over 160 countries. Our motto, "Protect What's Good" not only reflects our vision for making food safe, but also extends to minimising our impact on the environment.
Sustainability commitment
Around 75 percent of a Tetra Pak carton by weight is paperboard. Although we don’t own or manage any forests, we apply our purchasing power to promote sustainable forest management. We do this by joining up with suppliers, non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders to promote responsible forest management and strengthen traceability through certification and labelling
In sourcing paperboard for our packaging, we follow two main principles:
• All the wood fibre in our paperboard should come from forests independently certified as being managed in accordance with the principles of sustainable forest management
• We should be able to prove traceability from the forests all the way to the packaging material we produce at our sites globally, which can only be achieved through independent certification of the total Chain of Custody.
• The number of Forest Stewardship Council™ (FSC™)-labelled packages delivered has grown exponentially since the first such package was produced in 2007. By 2009, the annual total had climbed to 1.5 billion, reaching 18 billion in 2011 and 54 billion by 2015. By spring 2016, we had delivered a total of 200 billion FSC-labelled packages since production began. In 2017, 42 percent (or 90 billion) of Tetra Pak packages featured FSC labels. In 2018, we aim to grow this to just over 53 percent.
• In South Asia, we started deploying FSC labels on customers’ packages in 2015, which quickly grew to over 75% by end of 2018. We continue to work closely with customers to highlight the growing awareness about renewability and responsible sourcing, and therefore the need for brands to also underline their commitment to the environment.
“Tetra Pak cartons use around 75% paperboard and are already one of the most environmentally sound packages available today. In India, 100% of the paperboard we use is FSC certified, and 3 in 4 cartons already bear the FSC label. With increasing environmental consciousness among all stakeholders, we believe it is more important than ever before to proudly showcase our commitment to the environment. Therefore, we encourage all our customers to display the FSC logo on their packages, and we hope to increase it significantly over the next 2-3 years,”
Ashutosh Manohar, Managing Director, Tetra Pak South Asia
Inspiring systemic change
As a world leader in supplying food processing and packaging solutions, it is also our responsibility to ensure that we minimize the impact of our business on the environment, and to do this in partnership with our customers. We support initiatives around the world to increase the understanding of sustainable forestry and encourage responsible consumption. From a four-day media tour of an FSC certified forest in Malaysia to marking a global FSC Friday in partnership with Elle magazine and bringing celebrities on board to raise awareness about FSC paper in Hungary, and from an exhibition in the ancient glasshouse of Rome to experience tropical forests, to a month long FSC awareness campaign in Serbia, we work to ensure that we carry thousands of companies and customers along in this journey to protect the world’s forests.
We pride ourselves on being amongst the most environmentally sound packaging alternatives today, making packaging primarily from wood fibre – a renewable resource. By committing to sustainable sourcing, we are safeguarding the source of our key raw material, and with that, our own future.