Making our packaging more sustainable

We’re committed to making our packaging more sustainable. To do this, we’re working to minimise waste and associated pollution by moving to a more circular model, while reducing our dependency on non-renewable sources. But we can’t do it alone. We’re working with partners to drive global and local initiatives to improve the recyclability of consumer health product packaging.

Reduction of virgin petroleum-based plastic

• We aim to reduce our use of virgin petroleum-based plastic by 10% by 2025, and a third by 2030.¹

We’re aiming to reduce the use of virgin materials from non-renewable feedstocks by using less plastic, increasing the use of alternative packaging materials, and using recycled and bio-based plastic in our packaging.

Recyclability of our packaging

• We are working to develop solutions for all product packaging to be recycle-ready by 2025, as part of our goal to make all packaging recyclable or reusable by 2030.²

We want the packaging materials we use to stay in-use for as long as possible. That’s why we’re designing and rolling out recycle-ready packaging formats across our portfolio. Making our packaging recycle-ready is a key milestone to achieving recyclability, whereby a format is effectively collected, sorted, recycled in practice and at scale in at least one region.

Case study: Recycle-ready toothpaste tubes

We are switching our toothpaste tubes from complex multi-material layer laminates with an aluminium barrier, to solutions designed around a single material. We partnered with Albea Group to use its Greenleaf laminate tube technology in our Sensodyne, parodontax and Aquafresh toothpaste tubes, which can be recycled wherever collection programmes exist. The move to recycle-ready tubes began with Sensodyne Pronamel tubes in Europe in 2021; we are currently rolling out recycle-ready tubes in all continents.

Partnering to drive progress

• We aim to work with partners to drive global and local initiatives to collect, sort and recycle our packaging at scale by 2030.

There are challenges associated with the collection and sorting of small format consumer health packaging. Waste infrastructure needs enhancing to ensure that the steps taken to develop recycle-ready formats lead to recyclability, in-practice and at scale.

That’s why we’re working with partners, such as The Sustainability Consortium and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as with the Holy Grail initiative, to pioneer and test new technologies to sort and reprocess small formats.

We are a member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Network, working with and learning from partners to help accelerate the development and scaling of the circular economy for consumer health product packaging.

Having joined the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, we also support global action to address the challenges associated with packaging waste.

 

Footnotes

¹Versus our 2020 baseline.

²Where safety, quality and regulations permit.