For decades, many food & beverage companies have announced various long-term goals to mitigate their environmental impact. In many cases, product packaging has been a target of those sustainability initiatives, from recycling to reduction of the materials used.
Today, it’s not just food & beverage processors, but all sorts of consumer-packaged goods companies, who have made packaging initiatives integral to their circularity commitments, says John Hewitt, senior vice president of packaging & sustainability and state affairs at the Consumer Brands Assn.
“Reusable and refillable packaging creates an opportunity for sustainable packaging that many food & beverage companies are investing heavily in to achieve circularity for their products,” he explains. “Many of Consumer Brands’ largest members have ambitious goals to achieve recyclability or create reuse/refill solutions for all of their packaging materials by 2030 at the latest.”
Ambitious, but achievable? Coca-Cola Co. announced in 2022 that, “by 2030, 25% of its global product volume will be served to consumers in reusable packaging.” Coca-Cola North America backed that strategy up in July 2023, with its own announcement that it was ramping up its reusable packaging pilot programs. All that said, in December 2024, news outlets and watchdog groups noticed the company’s commitments had been modified — dropping the specific target for reusable packaging.
Coca-Cola issued a release in December that triggered some “greenwashing” accusations due to the change, which now states, “The company intends to continue to invest in refillable packaging where infrastructure already exists,” without any guideposts for how much it will invest or how far it will go.
The consumer conundrum
Consumers are on board with products that are more sustainable, but getting them to properly use those collection and sorting systems has been the biggest challenge thus far. Demand for sustainability-backed products appears to be growing, but creating packaging circularity often sounds like a taller mountain to climb when one considers the struggles to get widespread recycling standardized — and consumer participation is the critical boost the programs need to succeed.
“Reuse and refill systems rely on consumers to engage with the system by maintaining the packaging, returning it to the store, or participating directly in a refill process,” Hewitt adds. “Designing systems that maintain product safety and quality while being accessible and clear to encourage consumer participation is a priority for the consumer-packaged goods industry.”
Reusable packaging often requires less energy than the recycling process uses, therefore lowering greenhouse gas emissions for the company, Hewitt says. In addition, refillable packaging is designed for durability and extended use, while some packaging materials can be recycled only a certain number of times before the quality of the material simply degrades.
“Reuse/refill systems are not practical for every product type and can require higher levels of consumer engagement than recycling,” Hewitt says. The payoff, however, from a circularity standpoint, could be immense, according to a study published last summer by a group of MIT researchers who evaluated various strategies for increasing recycling rates of PET bottles in the U.S.
Though the study focused heavily on bottle recycling strategies (including deposit return systems), the authors noted the significant amount of opportunity that could be had if consumers were better engaged or enticed to feed a recycling or reuse system.
“In 2018, the PET bottle recycling rate, after accounting for losses along the recycling value chain, is 24%,” the authors wrote, “and the bottle-to-bottle circularity rate is 11%.” Later in the paper, the researchers added a note saying that any growth in reusable bottles could significantly alter the supply of PET bottles as well as demand.
Companies in food & beverage are among those developing diverse reuse/refill systems for a broad range of products to attempt to capitalize on this opportunity, Hewitt says.
“Some companies have pioneered refill-at-home models for goods like sodas and shampoos,” he said. “Others are innovating to create return-to-store reuse programs.”
Standardization would certainly help companies, consumers and the regional and local support systems gain some traction. A global plastics reuse initiative called PR3: The Global Alliance to Advance Reuse is working to accelerate scale-up of reuse systems around the world. Resolve, a global non-governmental organization that started PR3, is seeking American National Standards Institute (ANSI) designation for PR3 reuse standards.
When all is said and done, of course, successful sustainability strategies require a multi-pronged approach, especially in the realm of food & beverage packaging.
“A diverse array of solutions is necessary to achieve sustainability for all packaging materials — incorporating both reuse/refill systems and recycling,” Hewitt continues. “Many Consumer Brands members have integrated these two approaches in their overarching commitments to improve the sustainability their products.
Communicating and following through on those sustainability goals will help consumers get on board and drive success.
