Food and beverage brand Knorr has announced that it will be switching to fully recyclable paper wrappings for its bouillon and stock cubes, REB News reported.
While a bouillon cube is a small thing, the overall amount of plastic pollution that will be saved by this change could end up being substantial. The move will reportedly save an estimated 8.8 tons of plastic per year, as the previous wrappers were made with aluminum composites.
"The significant move to paper wrappers means that our Knorr stock cube boxes and wrappers are now recyclable, meaning more packaging can be recycled at home every day," said Georgina Bradford, marketing director for nutrition at Unilever UK and Ireland. Unilever is Knorr's parent company, having acquired the brand in 2000.
🗣️ When you think about a product's packaging, which of these factors is more important to you?
🔘 The way it looks 😍
🔘 The information it provides 🧐
🔘 The waste it produces 🗑️
🔘 I don't think about packaging at all 🤷
🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind
Unilever has come under fire recently for the amount of plastic waste it produces, which undoubtedly helped influence the company to make this change. Unilever previously promised to cut its virgin plastic use in half by 2025 but later backtracked and revised the pledge to reduce it by one-third by 2026, a difference of 110,000 tons per year.
The company has also drawn the ire of regulators in the United Kingdom for reportedly engaging in greenwashing practices by putting misleading "eco-friendly" claims on some of its products.
Plastic waste, made primarily from non-renewable and massively polluting petroleum, is a huge problem for our planet. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, we produce 440 million tons of it every year, with much of it ending up in our oceans, where it poses a direct threat to marine life.
Unilever's switch from aluminum composite stock cube wrappers to paper ones is certainly a small step, especially considering the vast array of products that Unilever produces (many of which still come in plastic packaging). However, it is a concrete action, not just a promise to be backpedaled at a later date, and that is indeed good news.
Now, it will be up to Unilever to show that it truly cares about its own stated environmental goals by actually reducing its virgin plastic usage by a substantial margin in the next couple of years.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Cool Picks
