Tetra Pak has now delivered more than 500 billion packages labelled with the Forest Stewardship Council™ (FSC™) logo globally, marking a significant milestone in the company’s journey to promote responsible sourcing and contributing to a low-carbon circular economy.

With the launch of the world’s first FSC-certified Tetra Pak^® package with J Sainsbury in 2007, the number of cartons bearing the FSC logo increased steadily each year, accelerating in the last three years. The environment is top of mind for consumers and is expected to be an even more relevant topic in the years ahead. Tetra Pak’s recent environmental research shows that there is an ever-growing trend of consumers interested in environmental issues, one in two consumers now look for environmental logos on the products they buy.

Consumers looking for environmental logos when shopping is a growing trend, rising from 37% of consumers saying they are always and often looking for environmental logos on the products they buy in 2013, to 54% in 2019*.

Widely recognised as the highest global certification standard for forest management, the FSC logo enables consumers to choose brands that are committed to sustainable forestry, with 30% of consumers globally having seen or heard of the FSC label*.

Collaboration with customers is key to driving sustainability across supply chains

Ivan Pavic, Manager global plastics and Liquid packaging procurement for Friesland Campina believes that “Tetra Pak’s achievement contributes to our target to source 100% certified paper board by 2020. The increase of FSC certifications enables us to strengthen our claims on deforestation free products and reduced global carbon footprint. We will continue to collaborate with Tetra Pak on increasing responsible sourcing in order to improve traceability upstream.”

“Responsible sourcing is a growing area of synergy with our customers” says Igor Popovic, Global Account Director PepsiCo at Tetra Pak: “We set a roadmap towards 100% FSC certified volumes with PepsiCo that we have completed earlier this year. These actions allow both companies to contribute to sustainable forest management and actively engage consumers in this journey.”

Mario Abreu, VP Sustainability at Tetra Pak said: “Having achieved full FSC Chain of Custody certification for all our operations, we can supply FSC labelled packages from anywhere in the world. Climate change and resource scarcity is impacting society and the food industry. FSC directly supports the sustainable forest management target under Sustainable Development Goal 15, while also contributing to targets under 14 other SDGs. Going forward we will ensure every supplier is committed to increase and maintain FSC certified volumes above 70%.”

Driving environment excellence is one of Tetra Pak’s strategic priorities. As part of this agenda, the long-term ambition is to deliver all packages with the FSC label.

*source: Tetra Pak Environment Research 2019