Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is to more than double the amount of recycled plastics 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 plastics to 9,000 tonnes of post-consumer resin and post-industrial resin, replacing virgin plastics in the supply chain. This is equal to the amount of waste generated by 6.5 million Europeans per day.
In total, 300 million bottles across P&G’s European household cleaning brands will be converted annually to either 100 per cent recycled or partially-recycled plastics. Additionally, all surface cleaning wipes will be made of 100 per cent recycled fibre.
This is a key milestone in helping to reach P&G’s Ambition 2030 commitment of reducing the amount of virgin plastics in all packaging by 50 per cent 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,” said Elvan Onal, P&G’s vice president for home care products in Europe. “Our work in minimising 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 optimised to work at low temperatures. In fact, UK consumers wash dishes on average at 47 deg C: by using Fairy at lower temperatures, consumers can cut their carbon footprint by up to 50 per cent. Similarly, 90 per cent 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.