Dunbia is among the founding parties to the UK Plastics Pact, launched today by sustainability experts WRAP, a collaboration of businesses, government and NGOs assembled to tackle the issue of plastic waste. The Pact is the first of its kind in the world.
Members of the Pact, including major food, drink and non-food brands, manufacturers and retailers have committed to ensuring that single-use plastic packaging will be a thing of the past, helping to transform the plastic packaging system in the UK and safeguard the environment.
The Pact commits to achieve a series of targets by 2025:
- Eliminateproblematic or unnecessary single-use plastic packaging through redesign, innovation or alternative (re-use) delivery models.
- 100%of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable.
- 70%of plastic packaging effectively recycled or composted.
- 30%average recycled content across all plastic packaging.
Commenting, Alan McKeown, Supply Chain Director, Dunbia said
“Dunbia is delighted to be a founding member of the UK Plastics Pact. We have already made significant progress in plastics reduction and the development of recyclable packaging options including the recent launch of a first to market, fully recyclable mince pack. We look forward to making a meaningful contribution to this important initiative to reduce the unnecessary use of plastics in our economy.”
Dunbia has a record of innovation in this area, having developed a single-polymer mince packfor the Co-op, in cooperation with Krehalon. The innovation was recognised with a Silver & Greenstar Sustainability Award at the 59th annual Starpack Packaging Industry Innovation Awards and offers superior environmental benefits over the conventional mince pack format, while also helping to increase recycling at consumer level.
The immediate focus of the Pact will be identifying the priority projects that will deliver greatest impacts in the short and long term, such as overcoming barriers to increasing the amount of recycled content used in new packaging, developing reusable packaging and working with partners to overcome the issue of un-recyclable black plastic.
A total of 42 UK companies have signed up to the pact including P&G, Danone, Nestlé and Coca-Cola. For more information see www.wrap.org.uk/UKplasticspact
