Unilever North America Commits to 50% Recycled Plastic Content by 2019

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Unilever North America announced significant boost to its plastic packaging commitments during the recently held Walmart Global Sustainability Milestone meeting held recently in Arkansas. It announced three step action plan to achieve 50% recycled contents in its packaging by the end of 2019. Meantime, the company has not revealed the current recycled content.

According to Unilever North America President Amanda Sourry, the company has already started working alongside other industry leaders such as Walmart in giving major push to initiatives on plastic packaging commitment in the region.

The initial goal of the company is to ensure that 50% of the plastic used by Unilever North America comes from post-consumer recycled content. This will help reduce virgin plastic in packaging, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create an end-market for recycled packaging in North America. Also, Unilever will add clear recycling labels and standardize its use on all packaging in the region. In addition, it will partner with Walmart to launch “Bring it to the Bin” shopper education program later this year, aimed at incentivizing and educating customers about recycling all packaging.

Originally, Unilever had announced its commitment to plastic packaging in 2017, by declaring to increase its use of recycled plastic content in its packaging to at least 25% by 2025 as against the 2015 baseline.