Page 25 - Packaging News magazine Jan-Feb 2022

January-February 2022 | www.packagingnews.com.au | SUSTAINABILITY
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APCO recognises sustainability achievers
Kellogg, Nestlé, Coles, BioPak, and CHEP were among the big winners at the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation’s Annual Awards ceremony, each taking home multiple accolades.
THE 2021 finalists and winners were recognised for their best practice approach to sustain- able packaging design, industry leadership and sustainability education. In total, 22 awards were handed out to businesses
in industry sectors as diverse as retail, electronics, manufacturing, healthcare, food and beverage, and agriculture. (The full list of winners is available on the PKN website.)
Kellogg Australia took home the ceremony’s main prize, the Sustainable Packaging Excellence Award, for its work to optimise 99 per cent of packaging for material efficiency by converting to a renew- able packaging format along with the continued application of the Australasian Recycling Label on the company’s packaging. The company now has more than 75 per cent of its packaging labelled as recyclable through the Australian kerbside or REDcycle system.
BioPak Founder Richard Fine took home the coveted Sustainability Champion Award in recognition of his tireless work championing
compostable packaging and driving progress towards both the National Packaging Targets and the National Food Waste Strategy Targets. (See page 26 for PKN’s interview with Fine).
The Our Packaging Future (OPF) Awards, which celebrate projects and initiatives designed specifi- cally to help Australia reach the 2025 National Packaging Targets, counted several well-known com- panies among its winners.
Nestlé Australia took home
both the OPF Award for end-market leadership, for Australia’s first chemically
recycled content soft food
wrapper and the OPF Award
for sustainability education (for consumers) for the KitKat ‘Give the Planet a Break’ recycling campaign.
BioPak was awarded the OPF Award for Improved Collection and Recycling Systems for Compost Connect, a food service focused organic recycling initia-
tive and online platform. Coles was recognised with the OPF Award for
sustainability education (for indus- try) for its packaging data project across the Coles Own Brand sup- plier base.
Another award recipient was Beacon Lighting (Outstanding Achievement in Sustainable Packaging Operations). Beacon has fully optimised its distribution pack- aging and no longer uses any outer packaging on products that are shipped to Australia from overseas suppliers. Returnable wooden pallets are now in place for store deliveries and large commercial shipments.
Also recognised was Austcor (Outstanding Achievement in Sustainable Packaging Outcomes), which has successfully optimised all of its packaging by developing stron- ger boxes with lightweighted paper.
CHEP Australia won Outstanding Achievement in Leadership, for increasing the uptake of the com- pany’s ‘Share and Reuse’ circular packaging solutions. This has saved over 120 tonnes of carbon emissions through transportation optimisation, increasingpalletstacks,maximising loads and re-routing its journeys. ■