Nestlé (Vevey / Switzerland; www.nestle.com) and Veolia (Paris / France; www.veolia.com) have announced their collaboration to work on waste collection as well as sorting and recycling plastic materials. The partnership will focus on flexible plastic packaging projects in 11 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. It will also explore technologies to establish viable models of recycling in different countries. This includes chemical recycling such as pyrolysis, which is capable of producing virgin quality plastics. These technologies will help Nestlé to increase the recycled content of its bottled water packaging to 35% and its overall product packaging to 15% by 2025. Pilot projects will start in multiple countries, with the intention of scaling these up globally.

Nestlé's partnership with Veolia follows a series of initiatives and steps to accelerate action to tackle plastics waste in line with its goal to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025. According to a recent report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF, Cowes / UK; www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org), Nestlé by its own account produces around 1.7m t/y of plastic packaging – see Plasteurope.com of 20.03.2019.