The Procter & Gamble Company has announced it will more than double the amount of recycled plastic in its packaging for household cleaning brands in Europe by early 2020. P&G brands Fairy, Flash and Viakal will increase the use of recycled plastic to 9,000 tonnes of post-consumer resin and post-industrial resin1 replacing virgin plastic in the supply chain. This is equal to the amount of waste generated by 6.5 million Europeans per day2.
In total, 300 million bottles across P&G’s European household cleaning brands will be converted annually to either 100% recycled or partially-recycled plastic. Additionally, all surface cleaning wipes will be made of 100% recycled fibre.
This is a key milestone in helping to reach P&G’s Ambition 2030 commitment of reducing the amount of virgin plastic in all packaging by 50% by 2030.
“We are proud of this significant milestone across our cleaning products as we know with our immense scale we can create a positive impact,” notes Elvan Onal, P&G Vice President for Home Care products in Europe. “Our work in minimizing our footprint goes beyond just the bottle – through our Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), we look holistically at our impact from product design to transit to consumer use, all the way through to end of life to ensure we are responsible stewards of our resources from beginning to end.”
It was identified through LCA findings that the biggest footprint reduction opportunity for home care cleaning products is during the consumer in-use phase, when high amounts of water may be used at home, and often at high temperatures.
Therefore, P&G household cleaning product formulas have been optimized to work at low temperatures. In fact, UK consumers wash dishes on average at 47C: by using Fairy at lower temperatures, consumers can cut their carbon footprint by up to 50%. Similarly, 90% of UK consumers wash their floor with warm or hot water: Flash is designed to deliver brilliant cleaning at low temperatures, allowing consumers to save on energy.
“Based on our LCA, there is tremendous opportunity for us to build in sustainability through our product performance, saving consumers on energy and water.” continues Elvan, “We want to delight our consumers instead of making consumers choose between an environmentally friendly product and one which has the performance they need and love. We welcome this challenge because we know if we make smarter products that work more efficiently, consumers can minimize compensating behaviors and in turn, lower their footprint.”
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