The successful joint project bringing together Heinz and Tesco with Berry Global—the packaging industry leader and recycling technology experts Plastic Energy and Sabic—had developed Heinz Beanz Snap Pots that were made with 39 percent recycled plastic. Now, this has been recognized with a Silver Award in the global Packaging Innovation Awards.
The Packaging Innovation Awards are the packaging industry’s premier awards competition, recognizing the best in packaging design, encouraging advancements in sustainability and performance, and inspiring the next big ideas. The awards look for creations that challenge the accepted limits of what’s possible, showcase new technologies or techniques, and inspire future innovation.
The award identifies how the project has improved sustainability for the Heinz Beanz Snap Pots while retaining what makes them so popular with consumers: their handy snappable format, microwave-readiness, and freshness retention.
The Heinz Snap Pots produced by Berry Global use 39% ISCC PLUS-certified (International Sustainability & Carbon Certification) recycled soft plastic on a mass balance basis. Soft plastic is returned by consumers and collected by Tesco stores for conversion by Plastic Energy into an optimal oil feedstock. This is combined with virgin material by Sabic to produce an alternative feedstock to manufacture recycled food-contact-approved plastic pellets.
These are sent to an ISCC-certified Berry Global site for manufacturing into new Heinz Snap Pots after extensive trials led by Sabic, Berry Global, and Kraft Heinz to select the correct polymer compositions to achieve the challenging technical requirements. After use, the Heinz Snap Pots can be recycled through curbside collection.
By diverting, recovering, and upcycling plastics that would otherwise have been sent to landfill or incineration, this first-of-its-kind project helps to promote and support the move towards a circular economy.
Jean-Marc Galvez, Berry CPI President, Berry Global, said, “It demonstrates how a collaborative approach across the entire value chain can deliver innovative circular packaging design, and we are delighted the Heinz Beanz Snap Pots project has received this important award.”
Jojo de Noronha, President of Northern Europe at Heinz, said: “We’re proud to have teamed up with leading experts to bring this important innovation to our customers.” “Our hope is that this prompts an industry-wide look at what more can be done to address the lack of soft plastics being recycled in the UK, and we can, as a collective, get better when it comes to developing new packaging solutions that are good for both our consumers and for our planet.”