Last year, it was declared that Nestlé, the famous food and drink company, was one of the top producers of plastic wastage in the world. Nestlé followed by Pepsi and Coke have been the top three plastic dumpers in the world so far. However, Nestlé is striving to shed off this unfavourable tag and do something conducive for the environment.
Nestlé’s Biodegradable Paper Wrapper
The company has launched a biodegradable paper wrap that is being called as a “world-first.” And it is in the process of wrapping its Yes! snack bars in these biodegradable paper wrappers that are bound to biodegrade in 6 months.
Image Credits: Nestle.com
The researchers working in the R&D sector of the company in York have developed these biodegradable wrappers. They have materialised a way to use recyclable paper wrappers through “flow wrap cold seal” to make a packaging line that is eco-friendly. This process has been, so far, suitable for plastic laminates and films. Nestle’s new product range of Yes! bars that are fruit and nut-based will be the first ones to use these wrappers. The first brand to adapt to recyclable paper wrappers, Nestlé will launch these bars this month.
Patent Rights
The Swiss company told the Financial Times that it has made it a point not to take a patented right to this technology. It has said that this is a means to encourage other companies to adopt this packaging method.
Stefano Agostini, the CEO of Nestlé in the UK and Ireland, has stated that the company is trying to take this as far as it can. Nestle intends to make all its packaging reusable or recyclable by 2025. Its focus right now, however, is on the biodegradable wrapper to make the packaging easy to recycle and sustainable. He hopes that this will do good to the environment and that other companies would follow suit.
Nestlé Packaging – Baby Steps
Nestlé has, in the recent past, taken up many noticeable initiatives to benefit the environment. Apart from its plans to adapt biodegradable packaging, it has also replaced some of the existing packaging to achieve sustainability goals. So far, it has replaced all plastic straws from its products, using eco-friendly paper straws instead. It has also rolled out paper packaging for quite a few of its products.
In the past, Nestle has pledged to make the company deforestation-free by the year 2020. Keeping up with this, it has announced its certification of deforestation-free management in three-quarters of their supply chain.
Yes! Biodegradable Packaging
Image Credits: Metro.co.uk
The Yes! snack bars will be rolled out with their new packaging this month. They will carry the message “carefully wrapped in paper” on their wrappers to reflect the work done by the production to achieve this amazing feat. The new packaging is very gently made and has revolutionised packaging in the food industry.
The packaging is made up of coated paper, which is recyclable. It comes from sustainable sources that are certified by The Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The biodegradable packaging is a significant project among the R&D researchers in the company’s York centre. Their small team has worked to the best of their abilities, both creatively and independently, over the last ten months. They have strived to find the perfect breakthrough material for this sustainable packaging.
Using paper on high-speed production lines has been one of the biggest challenges for these experts. They had to make sure that the papers are as durable as plastic. Moreover, they had to ensure that the bars should be in perfect condition during transport, production, and storage.
In the words of Jas Scott de Martinville, the Global Confectionery lead for the Nestlé R&D:
“This launch is the result of a lot of hard work at speed with our R&D teams delivering a recyclable paper solution for our YES! bars in less than ten months. It is an incredible achievement and one that we are all very proud of.”
The new paper wrapper bars are being launched in many European countries. This will be followed by a launch in the United States of America.
We hope to see more companies following the footsteps of Nestle to make the environment more sustainable.
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