From Unilever to L’Oréal, multiple big brands are missing and revising their sustainable packaging targets for 2025 – but why? We delve deeper into the commonly cited stumbling blocks, including overambition, underdeveloped infrastructure and regulation, access to recyclate, and consumer behaviour.
All the way back in its Global Commitment progress report for 2022, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation argued that most of its business signatories would ‘almost certainly’ fall short of a complete transition into reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging by 2025. As this prediction comes to fruition for so many big brands, even those outside the Commitment, some have tried to identify the roadblocks slowing their progress so far.
For instance, Unilever originally sought to halve its virgin plastic consumption by 2025, but it extended the deadline while decreasing the ambition. Now it aspires for a one-third reduction by 2026 – a target it describes as “more realistic”.
It had also hoped to achieve 100% recyclable, reusable, or compostable plastic packaging by 2025, yet it only reached 53% in 2023. Attributing this shortcoming to sector-wide difficulties with recycling flexible plastics, it has split its revised target into two; its rigid packaging portfolio must meet the requirements by 2030, and its flexibles must do the same by 2035.
Pablo Costa, global head of Packaging at Unilever, explained that “a gap remains between the ‘technical’ recyclability rate of our plastic packaging portfolio (72%) versus the ‘actual’ recyclability rate (53%). Designing our packaging for recycling is only the first step. There also need to be systems in place to recycle it, in practice and at scale.”
He added that “external factors, like the pandemic, also created significant headwinds.”
Colgate-Palmolive expressed similar concerns about recycling flexibles as it doubted its ability to achieve 100% recyclable, reusable, or compostable packaging by 2025. As a Global Commitment signatory, it first set its target in 2018, but chairman, president and CEO Noel Wallace argued that “we also need to work with others towards systemic changes that no company can achieve alone.”
PepsiCo was less specific as it projected in its 2023 ESG Summary that 92% of its packaging will be recyclable, compostable, biodegradable, or reusable by 2025. This would leave the company 8% short of its 100% target, which it attributed to a “unique set” of “significant global challenges”.
Another Global Commitment signatory, Mars, sought to achieve 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging by 2025. In its 2023 Sustainable in a Generation Report, it stated that 61% of its portfolio was designed to meet these criteria.
Similarly, it had aimed to increase the post-consumer recycled content of its packaging to 30% by 2025, but as of the report, the figure was limited to 1.5%.
Mars explained that while “almost half” of its packaging portfolio was undergoing redesigns to align with current and future recycling technologies, “the design and infrastructure changes needed are taking longer than we anticipated when we signed the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Global Commitments”, and that “addressing these fundamental issues cannot be done by businesses alone”.
Walmart expects to miss several of its targets for 2025. These include falling 31% short of a complete transition into recyclable, reusable, or compostable packaging, and making only 8% progress in its targets to manufacture 20% of its North American private-brand packaging and 17% of its global equivalent from post-consumer recyclate.
In general, the retailer has blamed “many factors outside our control” for these shortcomings: the limited emergence and scalability of innovative, more recyclable materials; the ongoing development of recyclable and compostable infrastructure; evolving public policy for material management systems; and consumer behaviour.
Further still, Walmart attributes a 6% increase in virgin plastic consumption for its global private-brand packaging – a step backwards for its 15% reduction goal – to growth in product categories like food.
The Coca-Cola Company also points to infrastructure, regulation, and consumer behaviours between global regions as setbacks in its sustainability journey. While it claimed to be over 95% of the way towards its goal to design 100% of its primary consumer packaging for recycling in late 2024, it has revised all its targets, including those with longer-term deadlines.
It previously planned to implement at least 50% recyclate into its primary packaging, and collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one sold, by 2030. In 2023, it reported the use of 27% recyclate in its global primary packaging portfolio and a 62% collection rate.
Now it has set a 2035 deadline, by which time it must collect 70-75% of the bottles and cans it brings to market, and feature 35-40% recyclate in its primary plastic, glass, and aluminium packaging, including a 30-35% increase in recycled plastic worldwide.
“Collective action is needed to support packaging collection infrastructure and policies,” the company said in a press release.
Even on a collaborative scale, the U.S. Plastics Pact – featuring such members as Aldi, Kraft Heinz, Danone North America, General Mills, Nestlé, and Unilever – only progressed halfway towards its target to achieve 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging by 2025.
Nothing on its list of eleven ‘problematic and unnecessary’ packaging materials – including but not limited to opaque or pigmented PET, rigid PETG, polystyrene, and PVC – was considered reusable, recyclable, or compostable as of the report’s publication, nor was it expected to be compatible with U.S. infrastructure at scale by 2025. Only 22% of members report phasing all eleven out of their operations.
Additionally, the Pact aspired for an average of 30% recycled or responsibly sourced biobased content in plastic packaging, but as of its 2023-2024 Impact Report, it had achieved only 11%.
Therefore, its Roadmap to 2025 was extended into a Roadmap 2.0. The Pact plans to “carry forward the unfinished targets from the original plan”, meaning the 2025 deadlines for 100% reusable, recycled, or compostable packaging, 30% recycled or biobased content, recycling 50% of its plastic packaging, and eliminating ‘problematic and unnecessary’ materials have all been pushed back to 2030.
One roadblock identified in the impact report is a lack of standardized recyclate specifications, including performance parameters.
“This creates a fragmented marketplace,” the Pact explains. “Packaging users are uncertain of which grades of PCR are most available for supply continuity. Recyclers face inefficiencies in their production processes from additional changeovers.
“By defining the required performance parameters for common packaging applications and mapping them to their intended end use, the industry will realize greater efficiencies and supply continuity.”
Furthermore, virgin resin is a cheaper option than the post-consumer recyclate used for packaging materials. The Pact advocates for policy that drives the “long-term, stable demand needed to drive investments to effectively capture and recycle plastic.”
It adds that “different interventions – including policy, technology, and infrastructure developments – are needed to achieve systemic change and ultimately raise the national U.S. recycling rate for plastic packaging.” This includes a clear and up-to-date calculation of America’s recycling rate for plastics, with the EPA reportedly failing to revisit the 13.3% calculation it recorded in 2018.
Mondelēz has also suggested in its 2024 Report that its difficulties in sourcing new materials and solving technical challenges have limited its avoidance of virgin plastics. It eliminated 4.6% of its targeted 5% virgin plastic reduction in 2024; yet rigid plastics constituted only 1.4% of this figure, despite Mondelēz targeting a 25% reduction by 2025.
It also wanted to design at least 98% of its packaging for recycling within the same time frame. While it was only 2% off-target by the end of 2024, this figure has remained stagnant since 2022.
“There are many challenges that may impede the advancement of a circular economy for packaging, including a landscape of disconnected national and sub-national policies, the need to transform complex global supply chains, and the sourcing of high-cost and limited availability materials,” the company explains.
Nevertheless, it credits a “slowly increasing supply” of new materials, such as recyclate for flexible film, as well as line trials at various manufacturing sites for a 4.6% reduction in its overall packaging footprint since 2020.
Other big names that have yet to reach their targets include Coca-Cola HBC. While it claims to have been designing all its primary PET, glass, aluminium, and aseptic carton packaging since 2022, having met its deadline three years early, it has cast doubt on the feasibility of its other targets for 2025.
One of its goals was to achieve 100% recyclable primary packaging by 2025; it claims that 35% of all the PET it used in 2023 was from recycled or renewable sources, and that 16% of PET used across all its markets was recycled, with the figure reaching 42% on its EU and Swiss markets.
All its locally produced bottles in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Romania, and Italy (excluding water bottles) had transitioned into 100% rPET by the end of 2023, the company reported. However, it did not reach its goal.
Additionally, it intended to recover the equivalent of 75% of its primary packaging for recycling or reuse. As of 2023, it was thought to have collected 56% of its primary packaging.
L’Oréal Groupe’s Universal Registration Document from 2024 also places the company 51% below its 100% target for reusable, refillable, recyclable, and compostable packaging by 2025, and 13% below its target to use 50% plastic from recycled or biobased sources in its packaging. We took a deeper dive into its progress so far.
For a rundown of the top six FMCG signatories’ packaging progress in the Global Commitment’s key metrics, check out our report, which takes stock of targets for reuse, recycling, compostability, PCR, virgin plastic reduction, and more.
If you liked this story, you might also enjoy:
The ultimate guide to the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation in 2025
How are the top brands progressing on packaging sustainability?
Everything you need to know about global packaging sustainability regulation in 2025
The key to increasing the use of reusable packaging in supermarkets
No comments yet