Mars Petcare now starts the second year of its pet food packaging recycling program adding an app support to reach more pet owners. The program relies on pet owners returning their used pet food packages to receive a sales discount. Pet owners can change empty packaging from any brand and get discounts on their next buying of Mars products.
Since the start, more than 150,000 bags with used packages have been collected and recycled into paving blocks in cat shape for Mars’ production site in Chonburi.
Using the new „Swap Recycling App“ invented with the social enterprise Second Life, Mars hopes to reach more pet owners that want to return their used pet food packaging.
Living up to the company’s goals of using recycled plastic for Sheba in Europe, eliminating 180 tons of plastic from the multipacks and using 100% recycled or resuable plastic packaging by 2025.
To reuse 2,000 of plastic waste, 20 pet food brands from the US, Canada and New Zealand have diminished plastic in packaging and supply chain. The companies have also aided with the financing of nature-bound plastic waste in cooperation with rePurpose Global. Experts guess than only the US pet food industry annually produces about 300 million pounds of hard-to-recycle plastic waste.
The research company Euromonitor sees the reason for the great use of plastic packaging in the stress to meet the intense sales increase and the conversion to smaller packages. However, responsible companies are searching for solutions to diminish the plastic waste. According to Euromonitor, the new program of Mars matches the initiatives of other companies such as Nestlé Purina’s point-of-sale refillable dispensers for cat food.
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