Nestlé Waters North America has announced that it will use 25% recycled plastic across its US domestic portfolio by 2021 as part of an ambition to reach 50% by 2025.
Image: Nestlé Waters North America plans to achieve 25% recycled plastic across its US domestic portfolio by 2021. Photo: courtesy of Nestlé Waters North America.
Nestlé Waters North America (NWNA) intends to continue expanding its use of recycled materials in the coming years.
The company is expanding its collaboration with Canada-based Plastrec and working with multiple suppliers to quadruple its use of food-grade recycled plastic (rPET) within three years.
At the starting of this year, Nestlé Waters and Plastrec unveiled a new 100%rPET Nestlé Pure Life bottle.
The company’s decision follows Nestlé Waters’ announcement of expanding collaboration with CarbonLITE, which announced plans to develop a third US facility in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2016 report revealed that most plastic packaging is used only once and the 95% of the value of plastic packaging material valued between $80bn and $120bn per annum is lost to the economy.
Nestlé Waters also made indirect investments in recycling infrastructure in the US, via its $6m investment in the Closed Loop Fund.
The investment fund is being used in municipalities such as Waterbury of Connecticut to expand recycling programs and increase the current city recycling rate from 6% to 25% by 2020.
Closed Loop Fund has also announced a $1.5m investment in rPlanet Earth, which is claimed to be the world’s first completely vertically integrated manufacturer of post-consumer recycled PET.
NWNA president and CEO Fernando Mercé said: “We want to take the ‘single’ out of ‘single-use’ bottles. Our bottles were never meant to be thrown in the garbage — we carefully design them to be collected, recycled, and repurposed.
“PET plastic is a valuable resource that, if recycled properly, can be used to create new bottles again and again. We’re proving that it can be done by making bottles out of other bottles, not ten years from now, but today.”
NWNA offers a portfolio of bottled waters for healthy hydration, including Poland Spring, Nestlé Pure Life, Perrier, and S. Pellegrino.