As part of its commitment to reduce natural resource needs and manage overall environmental footprint, The Kraft Heinz Co., Pittsburgh, Pa., announced the expansion of its environmental stewardship strategy to include time-bound targets for achieving greater packaging sustainability and setting science-based goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Specifically, Kraft Heinz aims to make 100% of its packaging globally recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025. To do so, Kraft Heinz will partner with packaging experts, organizations and coalitions to explore technical, end-of-life and infrastructure solutions. Kraft Heinz is already collaborating with Environmental Packaging International (EPI), Jamestown, R.I., for consulting, tracking and other specialist services in the packaging space. The company will also work toward increasing the usage of recycled content in its packaging and decreasing the overall volume of packaging used.

“Our collective industry has a massive challenge ahead of us with respect to packaging recyclability, end-of-life recovery and single-use plastics,” says Bernardo Hees, chief executive officer. “Even though we don’t yet have all the answers, we owe it to current and future generations who call this planet ‘home’ to find better packaging solutions and actively progress efforts to improve recycling rates. That’s why Kraft Heinz is placing heightened focus on this important environmental issue.”

Kraft Heinz has been working for years to optimize its high-volume packaging. For example, it exceeded its commitment to reduce the weight of its global packaging by 50,000 metric tons.

In addition, Kraft Heinz joined the Science Based Targets Initiative to set science-based greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals in its supply chain.

“We found that most of our emissions are coming from areas outside our direct operations. To truly succeed as champions of sustainability, we will look at our full value chain and determine where we can make the greatest impact for our planet,” adds Hees.