Designing for circularity

To contribute to the transition to a circular economy and help our customers reach their sustainability targets, we work on integrating circularity across systems and products.

At Huhtamaki, we design products with circular economy as a guiding principle. Our mission to make packaging more circular globally has forged valuable collaborations with our customers, partners and trade associations to gather the right knowledge and develop solutions.

Our ambition is that our products are designed to be recyclable, compostable or reusable.

We acknowledge that the actual level of recycling, composting and reuse depends also on the local recycling infrastructure and on the willingness of consumers to participate in recycling schemes. We aim to accelerate the development of collection, sorting and recycling infrastructure by working together with our value chain.

Enabling a circular economy together with our value chain

Life-cycle approach when designing our products

As a global packaging solution provider, we are committed to contributing to the transition from a linear to a circular economy, where products and materials are kept in circulation in a closed-loop system. This change starts from our product design and affects the entire life-cycle of products.

Our desing principles for circularity in our products set the foundation for our technical design framework. These principles are the building blocks for the integration of circularity into the design of our products, within each business segment of Huhtamaki.

When developing our products, we are guided by the following key principles:

Material selection: The main materials we use are renewable materials, recycled materials and polymers.

We make the best possible choice in the selection of materials to ensure environmentally viable, functional, fit-for-purpose packaging, which supports how we play our part in delivering systems which are both circular and low carbon. In a material positive system, the materials which provide access to safe, affordable food and help prevent food waste, then continue their journey through a low carbon circular economy by being recycled in ways that maximize their value to both the planet and people.

Product structure: We make sure circularity is considered in the product design and structure, by designing high quality, durable packaging that is fit for purpose, without excessive use of packaging, and by optimizing the amount of materials and resources used in our products while ensuring technical recyclability.

Product end-of-life: We are committed to increasing the recyclability of our products. We use materials compatible with collection and recovery systems, ensure sufficient consumer information and ease of use for collection and support easy, automatic sorting. We see waste as a valuable secondary resource and want to ensure that materials are kept in circulation for as long as possible through recycling, composting, or reusing.