Berry’s Collaborative Efforts Across the Value Chain to Enhance Recycled Content in Packaging

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On this Global Recycling Day, Berry is proud to celebrate the strides made toward our overarching goal of becoming the premier global sustainable packaging provider. We eagerly embrace the vast opportunities for collaboration across the value chain, focusing on recyclable design and circularity innovations that are instrumental in driving us toward a net-zero and circular economy. Together with our customers and other partners in the value chain, we are taking decisive steps to achieve “More Together” for the well-being of both people and the planet. This includes developing products with recycled materials on a large scale and investing in regional infrastructure to facilitate plastic waste recovery.

Advancing Recycled Packaging
As a leading plastic recycler globally, Berry boasts the capability to recycle approximately 350 million pounds (160,000 tonnes) annually of post-consumer and post-industrial plastic. Furthermore, we prioritize the recovery of internal scrap, with a majority of our manufacturing facilities worldwide equipped with recycling equipment.

Our cutting-edge recycling technologies encompass sorting, size reduction, washing, compounding, and decontamination, enabling us to deliver high-quality, homogenized materials for circular products. This empowers us to provide tailored recycling solutions for our customers’ specific product lines.

Honoring “Recycling Heroes”
The theme of #RecyclingHeroes for Global Recycling Day underscores the invaluable contributions of individuals, communities, and initiatives that highlight the pivotal role of recycling in fostering environmental stability and a sustainable future that benefits all.

We are actively engaged in multiple global infrastructure investments aimed at increasing the utilization of recycled content and enhancing the collection and recyclability of plastic waste. Through collaborations such as the innovative recycling trial in the U.K. with food brand Heinz, retailer Tesco, and chemicals supplier SABIC, we are working to close the loop on soft plastic food packaging. Additionally, partnerships with companies like Mars Wrigley, The Bio-D Company, and Coca-Cola have led to the development of circular solutions, including lighter-weight jars made with recycled plastic and reusable cleaning bottles made with 100% post-consumer recycled material.

Expanding Recycled Plastics for Contact-Sensitive Applications
The next phase of our recycling journey involves exploring the introduction of recycled plastic suitable for contact-sensitive applications from our new recycling facility in Leamington Spa, UK. Leveraging our proprietary CleanStream® recycling technology, this facility not only mechanically recycles domestically recovered household plastic waste but also washes, sorts, and decontaminates it to produce lower-carbon, contact-sensitive recycled plastic at scale.

With an initial annual recycling capacity of 50,000 tonnes, the Leamington Spa facility has the potential to recycle nearly 40%* of all polypropylene waste collected from domestic recycling bins in the United Kingdom. This significant contribution will help close the loop for contact-sensitive packaging, addressing the current demand while preparing for future needs.