Waste reduction

Packaging helps to protect food and beverages, ensure product quality and freshness, communicate nutritional information and prevent food waste.

However, these essential requirements should not come at the expense of the planet. That’s why reducing waste, managing recovered materials and increasing recyclability and circularity are critical. Our vision is ambitious: a world in which none of Nestlé’s packaging, including plastics, ends up in landfill or as litter.

Packaging is also an important component in tackling the global challenges of food waste. We are considering our own operations, collaborating with industry peers and educating consumers.

Our progress toward more responsible packaging

Supporting the circular economy

We are supporting the creation of a circular economy through our work on better packaging, less packaging and better systems. This work includes reducing our use of virgin plastic, piloting reuse and refill systems, expanding our use of paper packaging, and helping create well-functioning collection, sorting and recycling schemes across the countries where we operate. The global infrastructure gap is significant and not in our immediate control – but we are working with partners around the world to model successful collection practices. We also welcome new laws and regulations being introduced to improve the environmental profile of packaging and speed up the development of necessary infrastructure to collect, sort and recycle materials.

We aim that above 95% of our plastic packaging will be designed for recycling by 2025, with the ambition of getting to 100% recyclable or reusable packaging. We are also reducing our use of virgin plastic by one third by 2025.

Access Waste Reduction performance data

Download our commitments and related KPIs in the CSV Report Appendix: Waste Reduction (pdf, 20Mb).