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Cargill’s oils business in India reduces plastic use across offerings
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Thursday, 24 October, 2019, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Our Bureau, New Delhi
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Cargill’s oils business in India has redesigned its packaging by cutting down on the amount of raw plastic used across all products. The company, in a statement here, stated that in association with Dow Chemical, the business reformulated its plastic material, making 90 per cent of its plastic packaging recyclable.
It added that it was working to address plastic waste management in three ways: reduce, recycle and recover.
Converting 90 per cent of its plastic packaging to recyclable packaging across its oils business is just one step in this direction. The business has also reduced the use of plastic by removing the paper label and converting it to in-mould labelling and converting paper used in the corrugated boxes to Forest Stewardship Council- (FSC) certified.
The company claimed that these efforts resulted in a reduction of 225 metric tonne (MT) of plastic annually and reduction in CO2 emission to 445MT.
Piyush Patnaik, managing director, Cargill’s oils business in India, said, “As a responsible business, we started this initiative with the goal of rethinking plastic packaging without compromising on the packaging quality.”
“Our efforts in the future will be strengthened as we are working to further our efforts to reduce, recycle and recover plastic packaging. We are constantly harmonising our objectives with government initiatives to impact change in a sustainable manner,” he added.
Patnaik added that the business is committed to promoting a sustainable environment by reducing raw plastic usage in its popular edible oil brands Gemini, Sweekar, and NatureFresh.
He informed that to improve the recovery of recyclable plastics, Cargill’s oils business in India was also working with the Indian Pollution Control Association (IPCA), a NGO (non-governmental organisation) registered with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), to strengthen the collection and processing of used packages from consumers.
Commenting on the partnership, Ashish Jain, director, IPCA said, “IPCA helps the business in gathering post-consumer multi-layered plastic (MLP) and non-MLP waste as part of the Extended Producer Responsibility initiative.”
“IPCA has installed various dry waste collection centres at important locations to segregate and compact plastic waste before distributing it to co-processing industries and plants,” he added.
“The business has increased its collection target to 70 per cent, while adding more locations across India. And we are happy to be associated with a company who pro-actively carries their Extended Responsibility for the betterment of society and the environment,” Jain said.
It is pertinent to mention here that recently the debate around use of plastic in food packaging has been a hot topic after Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for a ban on single-use plastic.
There were hectic deliberations started over the alternatives to the plastic and it became incumbent upon the food companies to look for other options, besides disposal of the plastic waste.
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