On December 19, British supermarket chain Iceland (iceland) announced a partnership with Mondi, a global leader in paper packaging, to improve the environmental sustainability of its product packaging. Mondi's functional barrier paper will reduce the supermarket's plastic packaging use by 80 percent, and the partnership aims to help Icelandic supermarkets in their plans to completely eliminate plastic packaging by 2023.
This comes as Iceland aims to be the first UK supermarket to offset its entire plastic footprint by replacing virgin plastic with paper packaging wherever possible and "offsetting" its remaining plastic footprint by "recovering and recycling environmental and natural waste plastics"!
British supermarket chain Iceland (iceland)
Iceland's current plastic packaging will be replaced by functional barrier paper solutions from Mondi's diverse portfolio. The first product to be converted is the retailer's frozen chicken Nordstrom, which has already achieved its goal of reducing plastic by 80% per year.
Innova Market Insights identifies "fiber mania" as one of the key packaging trends for 2021. According to market researchers, more than half of global consumers (52%) cite recyclability of packaging as their most important sustainability direction.
Another 52% cite reusability as the most important credential, followed by the use of recycled materials (41%). Meanwhile, 72% of global consumers and 62% of U.S. consumers recognize the "special" recyclability of paper.
Mondi's Functional Barrier Paper
Mondi Functional Papers and Films (FPF), part of Mondi's Engineered Materials business unit, offers paper and film-based solutions such as release papers, barrier coatings and technical films that follow its motto paper as closely as possible in order to provide customers with products that are designed to be sustainable.
The company believes that consumers can easily recycle paper from existing waste streams, and because paper is the most widely recycled material in the world - 74 percent of paper and 83 percent of paper packaging in Europe is recycled - this solution ensures that paper can be recycled at the end of its useful life contribute to the circular economy by ensuring that paper can be recycled at the end of its useful life.
Stuart Lendrum, head of packaging, quality and food safety at Iceland, describes the retailer as "bold" in its removal of plastic: "We are the first UK retailer to publish our plastic footprint and commit to eventually going plastic-free. To deliver on this commitment, the company needs the sustainable patents of a global packaging supplier like Mondi."
