On 1 December 2023, an important milestone occurred for the world’s food systems. In Dubai at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP 28), for the first time ever, a global agreement aimed at improving food systems1 was signed and adopted by 159 countries. At Tetra Pak, we welcomed this agreement, which acknowledges that the way the world grows and produces food is critical for protecting nature’s resources and communities.
It commits signatories to scale up solutions to address the impact of food and agricultural systems. This sets a new foundation for the sustainable transformation of the global food system in the years ahead – one that is critical to reducing impacts on climate, nature and people, and improving the lives of those in vulnerable communities.
Against this backdrop, collaboration across the food industry is ever more important – to feed a growing population, sustainably. At Tetra Pak we provide integrated solutions for the processing and packaging of food, working with our customers to keep food supply chains running, to minimise food waste, and to make food safe and available everywhere, while protecting people and the environment.
Our global presence and end-to-end solutions give us opportunities every day to collaborate with stakeholders across the value chain, from farmers and food producers, to suppliers, policy makers, consumers and others. We understand the responsibility that comes with this role at the heart of our world’s food systems.
It is why our ambition is to lead the sustainability transformation within our industry – because we can contribute and collaborate across the entire value chain. It is also why we take a holistic approach in our sustainability agenda across five interdependent areas: it starts with food systems and includes circularity, climate, nature and social sustainability.
Because food processing and packaging are essential to the transformation of food systems. For decades, our technology and solutions have contributed to reducing food waste and making food accessible even in remote areas with challenging supply chain conditions, protecting the quality and safety of perishable foods while extending their shelf life. We have done this for over 70 years, but we know we can do more in collaboration with our stakeholders. This is why, in 2023, we developed a Food Systems Approach that details our role in the transformation with corresponding targets for each of its four pathways.
In parallel, we have been investing heavily to significantly enhance the sustainability profile of our packaging and processing solutions. We continued to invest approximately €100 million per year in packaging research and development, and we will continue to invest a similar amount annually in the years ahead. We also launched an aseptic beverage carton featuring a paper-based barrier, with 90% renewable content – putting us one step further towards our journey to develop the world’s most sustainable food package2.
We also continued to invest €40 million annually to increase the collection and recycling of carton packages worldwide. Compared to 2022, collection of carton packages increased globally by 7% in 2023, amounting to approximately 1.3 million tonnes of carton packages collected and sent for recycling.
Decarbonising food systems is another critical priority. We approach this from a complete value chain perspective – working upstream with suppliers, decreasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in our own operations, working with customers downstream on the impact of their operations, and addressing the end-of-life of our products. We are on track to meet our target of net-zero GHG emissions in our own operations (scope 1 and 2 and business travel) by 2030 from a 2019 baseline, having achieved a 47% reduction (scope 1 and 2 and business travel)3 already since 2019. This progress supports our long-term ambition to achieve net zero GHG emissions across our value chain (scopes 1, 2 and 3) by 2050 from a 2019 baseline. As of 2023, we have achieved a 20% reduction in total absolute GHG emissions across our full value chain compared to 2019.
We also recognise the urgency of action to halt and restore nature loss and achieve a water-secure world – and through our work with our own operations, customers, and suppliers, we aim to reduce the impacts of our value chain on nature and to restore landscapes. Last year we conducted an assessment to understand our impacts and dependencies on nature. This led to our new Approach to Nature, which defines quantitative targets and sets clear actions to reduce negative impacts our business might have on nature and water. In 2023, we embedded these targets and actions in different areas of our own operations, upstream and downstream of our value chain.
And we remain committed to social sustainability. This includes respecting human rights across our own operations and value chain, in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), with action plans initiated with our stakeholders in 2023.
In addition, 64 million children in 49 countries received milk or other nutritious beverages in Tetra Pak packages through our School Feeding Programmes in 2023. We also expanded our involvement in School Feeding Programmes to countries including Bangladesh, Uganda and Yemen, and added three new Dairy Hub projects in Colombia, India and Nepal. During 2023, 29,300 farmers – 99% of whom are smallholder farmers – delivered milk to our customers through our Dairy Hub projects.
Internally, we continued promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) within our organisation, improving female representation in senior positions; driving awareness and actions to foster inclusiveness and wellbeing; and initiating or accelerating various programmes to support our DE&I approach.
The hard work, drive and passion of our teams and our stakeholders have ensured supply chain continuity. They have showed enduring commitment to securing sustainability transformation amidst increasing challenges. We are on a journey – one of collaboration, where companies, policy makers and civil society need to come together to find and implement sustainable solutions to the challenges we face as a society.
At Tetra Pak, this transformation continues to lie at the core of our purpose: “We commit to making food safe and available, everywhere and we promise to protect what’s good: food, people and the planet”.
Footnotes:
1The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), “Sustainable Food Systems”, 2018, defines food systems: “Food systems encompass the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities involved in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food products that originate from agriculture, forestry or fisheries, and parts of the broader economic, societal and natural environments in which they are embedded.”
2‘The world’s most sustainable food package’ means creating cartons that: are fully made of renewable or recycled materials; are responsibly sourced – and so help to protect and restore our planet’s climate, resources and biodiversity; contribute towards low carbon production and distribution; are convenient and safe, so help to enable a resilient food system; and are fully recyclable.
3Scope 1 covers direct emissions from owned or controlled sources. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling consumed by the reporting company. Scope 3 includes all other indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain.