A trio of leading food and beverage companies are among the initial members of a newly launched consortium to develop new, more sustainable packaging solutions.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation on Wednesday announced the debut of the PaperFlex Consortium, which aims to accelerate the development and use of flexible packaging made from paper.
The group, organizers said, is powered by (RE)SET and includes six consumer product leaders as its founding members: food and beverage giants PepsiCo, Nestlé and Mars, as well as Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble and Unilever.
Flexible plastic packaging, organizers noted, is the fastest-growing type of plastic packaging globally, but large-scale solutions to recycle it are typically not available. The six members of the consortium would combine their packaging R&D capabilities to help fund and test innovations in recyclable or biodegradable paper-based alternatives.
“The consortium challenges the traditional mindset of innovating on our own, demonstrating that partnership — structured with legal oversight, clear guardrails on permissible topics, and an independent third-party convenor — can accelerate the development of more sustainable packaging in ways that no single company could achieve alone,” Allison Lin, Mars’ global vice president of healthy planet and chief circularity officer, said in the announcement.
“By joining our efforts under the PaperFlex Consortium, promising paper innovations will be developed and deployed responsibly at scale faster and at lower cost,” added Nestlé Global Packaging Development Head Gilles Demaurex.
