Aiming for a sustainable future

Niels Hougaard, Managing Director, Tetra Pak Arabia Area on promoting planet-friendly services

The concept of sustainability and innovation has evolved in this region. How has it evolved with a global brand like Tetra Pak?

At Tetra Pak, we help our customers reduce their own environmental impact and meet their carbon reduction goals by continuously optimising our processing and packaging offering.

Our innovative technologies focus on delivering low-waste processes and packaging that prolongs shelf-life. This ensures food availability for a growing population while helping to address the food waste problem.

Through continuous investment in innovation, we offer processing solutions that enable water consumption, carbon footprint and food waste reductions. We also offer environmental benchmarking and improvement services to help our customers significantly reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This way, food and beverage manufacturers are able to reduce their operational costs.

Consumer behaviour – What is the biggest shift that you have observed lately among Middle East consumers?

Our latest Tetra Pak Index indicates that since the pandemic, consumers are increasingly aware of the dilemma between the need for greater food consumption and the impact on our planet – both in terms of packaging waste and food waste. They are also preoccupied with food safety: Over two-thirds of respondents globally consider food safety a major issue for society, putting it jointly with Covid-19 as a 'real threat'. At the same time, the concern about food waste and availability is also growing.

With an eye towards the future, what needs to be done to facilitate a fully circular economy in the food and beverage industry?

As mentioned before, the pandemic has highlighted the fact that our world needs high-performance packaging and at Tetra Pak, we are already on this journey. We believe that the industry needs to step up towards the twin goals of protecting our planet’s ecosystem and meeting the people’s need for food. Only then can we be a part of building a sustainable future for upcoming generations, especially after Covid-19.

We are excited to hear about your ‘Go nature. Go carton.’ campaign – Can you shed some light on this?

With the 'Go nature. Go carton.' campaign, we are announcing our ambition to deliver the world’s most sustainable food package – a fully recyclable and carbon-neutral carton package that is made solely from responsibly sourced renewable or recycled materials. Surely, this will not happen overnight. But, we remain fully committed towards this goal.

As a global brand committed to protecting what’s good with a focus on sustainability, we are aiming to create a future where safe and nutritious food is available everywhere. We hope to reach a point where all packages are collected, recycled, and never become litter.