Cargill’s oils business in India has redesigned its packaging by cutting down on the amount of raw plastic used across all products. In association with Dow Chemical, the business reformulated its plastic material, making 90% of its plastic packaging recyclable.
The business is committed to promoting a sustainable environment by reducing raw plastic usage in its popular edible oil brands Gemini, Sweekar, and NatureFresh. To raise further awareness among consumers, the brands carry the slogan “recycle the present, save the future” on their packaging.
The company is working to address plastic waste management in three ways: reduce, recycle and recover. Converting 90% of its plastic packaging to recyclable packaging across its oils business is just one step in this direction. The business has also reduced the use of plastic by removing the paper label and converting it to in-mould labelling and converting paper used in the corrugated boxes to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified. These efforts resulted in a reduction of 225 Metric Tons (MT) of plastic annually and have successfully reduced CO2 emission to 445MT.
To improve the recovery of recyclable plastics, Cargill’s oils business in India is working with the Indian Pollution Control Association (IPCA), India’s First PRO regd. with Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), to strengthen the collection and processing of used packages from consumers. IPCA helps the business in gathering post-consumer multi-layered plastic (MLP) and non-MLP waste as part of the Extended Producer Responsibility initiative. IPCA has installed various dry waste collection centres at important locations to segregate and compact plastic waste before distributing it to co-processing industries and plants. The business has increased its collection target to 70% while adding more locations across India.
Speaking on this, Mr Piyush Patnaik, Managing Director, Cargill’s oils business in India said, “As a responsible business, we started this initiative with the goal of rethinking plastic packaging without compromising on packaging quality. Our efforts in the future will be strengthened as we are working to further our efforts to reduce, recycle and recover plastic packaging. We are constantly harmonizing our objectives with government initiatives to impact change in a sustainable manner.”
Commenting on the partnership, Ashish Jain, Director IPCA said “IPCA is a proud partner of Cargill’s oils business in India for executing its Extended Producer Responsibility for managing plastic waste. We are happy to be associated with a company who pro-actively carries their Extended Responsibility for the betterment of society and the environment and it gives immense pleasure to see their efforts not only collecting and recycling post-consumer plastic waste, but they are also working toward reducing their plastic consumption and did excellent work in R&D with respect to plastic packaging design.”
