Nestlé in society Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015

Nestlé in society:
Creating Shared Value
Nutrition, health
and wellness Rural development Water
Environmental
sustainability
Human rights
and compliance
Our
people
G4-EN2, G4-EN28
Packaging
Packaging performs a variety of functions, from preventing food waste and maintaining product quality during
shelf life, to providing convenience and information for consumers. When designing our packaging, we take a
holistic approach to assessing environmental impacts across its entire life cycle, aiming for performance and
functionality while seeking to optimise weight and volume. We continue to develop and use materials from
sustainably managed renewable resources, support initiatives to recycle or recover energy from used packaging,
and use recycled materials where beneficial and appropriate.
Our approach
Our commitment
Improve the environmental performance
of our packaging
Our approach to packaging is aligned with The Nestlé Policy
on Environmental Sustainability and focuses on five areas:
• The systematic use of ecodesign tools to assess
environmental performance across the product life cycle;
• Continuing to optimise the weight and volume of our
packaging;
• Leading the development and use of renewable materials;
• Supporting initiatives to recover used packaging and
address littering; and
• Using recycled materials where there is an environmental
benefit and where it is appropriate.
Our objective
By 2017 – Continue to systematically analyse and optimise
our packaging portfolio, avoiding the use of at least
100 000 tonnes of packaging material from 2015 to 2017.
Ecodesign
All our packaging needs to meet certain performance
standards in terms of product protection, quality, safety, cost,
production efficiency and consumer acceptance, while having
the best possible environmental performance. Although
packaging design decisions can make an important
contribution to environmental performance across the product
life cycle, the science is complex.
We have an internal standard that sets out the ecodesign
process for ensuring that the environmental performance of
products, including their packaging, is systematically assessed
and taken into account for all relevant innovation and
renovation projects.
Our ecodesign tools are used to systematically assess
environmental performance and inform our packaging
decisions. After using PIQET, we have now completed the rollout
of its replacement, giving us an evaluation of the overall
environmental performance of food products throughout their
entire life cycle. To date, we have evaluated 6174 projects and
17 724 scenarios using our ecodesign tools, covering
packaging and product development projects.
To adapt these tools to suit the local packaging waste
collection, sorting and recycling infrastructure, Nestlé
Germany has further refined its market-specific ecodesign
process, NEATpack (the Nestlé Environmental Assessment
Toolkit for packaging development). This holistic process
has been defined, mapped and rolled out within the market.
The use of the NEATpack process is now mandatory for all
packaging development projects within Nestlé Germany.
A good example of the beneficial usage of NEATpack is the
development of the black Maggi 5-minute Asia Terrine (see
case study).
As a representative of EUROPEN in the EU Product
Environmental Footprint Packaging Working Group, Nestlé
continues to contribute to the establishment of guidelines
for the environmental assessment of packaging.
Optimising weight and volume
In continuing to optimise our packaging systems, we avoided
the use of 58 284 tonnes of packaging material in 2015. This
is equivalent to a cost saving of CHF 95.4 million. Due to our
efficient ecodesign process, the implementation of best-inclass
materials and technologies, and the level of efficiencies
we have already achieved, it will become increasingly difficult
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