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Protects What’s Good

At Tetra Pak, our sustainability agenda is shaped by our purpose ‘We commit to making food safe and available, everywhere and we promise to protect what’s good: protecting food, people and the planet.’

Our sustainability agenda

With a world-leading position in food processing and packaging, backed by more than 70 years of trusted experience, we aim to lead the sustainability transformation within our industry. To do that, our sustainability agenda focuses on five interconnected areas where we have the greatest impact, risks and opportunities:

Food systems, Climate, Circularity, Nature and Social sustainability. Food systems lie at the heart of our sustainability agenda. As a producer of 179 billion paper-based carton packages in 2023, Tetra Pak has a role to play in helping to feed the growing global population by minimising food loss and waste, reducing climate impact, acting for nature and promoting circularity – while respecting human rights across our own operations and the value chain.

Committed to openness and transparency

We are committed to monitoring, managing and transparently reporting on our performance and progress. In 2023, we conducted our first double materiality assessment, aligned with the requirements in the new European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). The assessment considered Tetra Pak’s impacts on people and the environment, as well as the material risks and opportunities that various environmental, social and governance topics have on Tetra Pak’s business.

Sustainability highlights

Below are some of our 2023 sustainability highlights. For the full story, see our latest Sustainability Report.

 

Food

Driving food systems transformation

Tetra Pak has launched an integrated approach to drive the transition towards more secure, sustainable and resilient food systems.1 This involves harnessing the company’s leading role in the food processing and packaging industry to enable greater food security and reduce food loss and waste, while improving livelihoods and increasing access to food. Four pathways – along with ambitions, roadmaps and measurable targets – have been identified to contribute and align with the critical transitions for food and land transformation set out by the Food and Land Use Coalition.2

Food

Concrete solutions for COP28

Tetra Pak brought concrete solutions to the table at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai – COP28. “At Tetra Pak, we’re not just making pledges; we’re driving a transformative agenda, based on a robust evidence-­base. We are answering the call for private sector engagement by demonstrating both our ambitions and our strategic plan on how we will realise them,” said Charles Brand, Executive Vice President for Processing Solutions & Equipment, Tetra Pak.

CIRCULARITY

Investing in collection and recycling

Tetra Pak continued to develop the collection and recycling of paper-based carton packaging by investing approximately €40 million in different projects around the world to further increase the collection and recycling of paper-based carton packages. In 2023, as part of a €29 million joint investment with Stora Enso, a state-of-the-art recycling line for used beverage cartons was opened in Poland. Other initiatives in collaboration with local organisations included investments in the first carton packaging recycling facility in Australia and an automatic sorting centre in China.

NATURE

The Tetra Pak approach to nature

Recognising the urgency of action to halt and reverse nature loss and achieve a water-secure world, Tetra Pak is committed to acting for nature by supporting the achievement of the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In 2023, we implemented the ‘Tetra Pak Approach to Nature’ initiative, which includes quantitative targets and actions across four pillars: upstream, downstream, operations and transform.

CLIMATE

Paper-based barrier launched

Tetra Pak and Lactogal launched an aseptic beverage carton featuring a paper-based barrier. This was part of a large-scale technology validation involving around 25 million packages in Portugal. The package consists of 90 per cent renewable content and has a carbon footprint that is a third less than conventional packages.3

CLIMATE

Tetra Pak’s forestry leadership recognised for eight year running

Tetra Pak was once again recognised for its forestry transparency and performance by global environmental non-profit CDP by securing a place on its annual leadership ‘A List’. Based on data reported through the CDP 2023 forests questionnaire, the company was among the 2 per cent of companies that achieved an ‘A’ score out of over 21,000 companies assessed. Tetra Pak also scored A- on both CDP climate change and water security, which made it the only company in the carton packaging sector to receive leadership band scores on all three questionnaires.

CLIMATE

Join Us in Protecting the Planet

Tetra Pak takes a value chain approach, working together with suppliers, customers and other stakeholders to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain (scopes 1, 2 and 3)4 by 2050. In 2023, we updated and sharpened our ‘Join Us in Protecting the Planet’ supplier initiative from 20 actions to nine focused actions, with clear targets to drive impact together with our suppliers. The initiative started with base material suppliers5 and in 2023 was extended to another 100 suppliers – including many crucial players in our equipment value chain.

SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY

Strengthening social sustainability

In 2023, we strengthened our human rights due diligence process – including stakeholder engagement in our supply chain and the informal waste collection of packaging. For example, in Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam, we commissioned local non-governmental-organisation (NGO) to interview hundreds of waste collection workers. The valuable data collected will be used to inform dialogue with customers and other stakeholders working to develop collective action at country level to improve outcomes for waste collection workers.

1 A food system is a system that embraces all the elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructure, institutions, markets and trade) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution and marketing, preparation and consumption of food and the outputs of these activities, including socio-economic and environmental outcomes. Source: High Level Task Force on Global Food and Nutrition Security (HLTF) (un.org)
2 Food and Land Use Coalition | World Resources Institute (wri.org)
3 Benchmark: Tetra Brik® Aseptic 200 Slim Leaf carton package with aluminium foil layer.
4 Scope 1 covers direct emissions from a company’s owned or controlled emission sources. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling consumed by the company. Scope 3 includes all other indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain.
5 Base materials are the materials we use to produce the packaging we sell to food and beverage producers, including paperboard, polymers, aluminium foil and inks.

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