In a circular approach to the economy, the issue of the end of life of products is increasingly relevant and central. For this reason, for several years now, the Sanpellegrino Group has been constantly working to raise public awareness of the correct collection of waste, to increase recycling performance and to find alternative materials. The booklet "Everything you want to know about plastic bottles" highlights the company's commitment to adopting a strategy aimed at minimizing the environmental footprint in order to implement specific projects that work not only on the packaging front but also on the impact of production and transport.
Bottles in PET
Not all plastics are the same: each has its own characteristics, properties and fields of application. The Sanpellegrino Group uses only PET (polyethylene terephthalate) for its bottles: a light, resistant and safe resin, suitable for contact with food - as it can guarantee optimal protection of water quality - and above all it is 100% recyclable. This material, in addition to having different origins - fossil when there are hydrocarbons at the base, biological when it comes to plants and biomass - if collected and sorted can be recycled and, in turn, can give rise to other bottles in R-PET (Recycled PET).
Recycled PET and materials of organic origin
With regard to packaging, one of the Group's primary objectives is to achieve, by 2025, 35% of recycled PET within its entire product range. Levissima and Acqua Panna, on the other hand, have set themselves an even more challenging goal: produce, within the same period of time, all their bottles with a percentage of R-PET equal to 50%, i.e. the maximum content of recycled PET allowed by Italian regulations. The company also works constantly to introduce materials of organic origin, such as BIO-PET, already present in different sizes of bottles of Levissima, and to find alternative solutions for bottling.
The Group also aims to launch innovative and replicable projects, capable of being expanded and extended together with other players in the supply chain, which is why it is one of the founders of CORIPET - an Italian consortium of beverage producers and recyclers created to develop a PET collection system for food use to be launched directly to the "bottle-to-bottle" process. This is in order to increase the availability of high-quality recycled plastics and to ensure that an increasing number of bottles are collected and sent for recycling, in a logic "from bottle to bottle", which can supply a stronger chain of recycled PET. Here, too, the objective is very ambitious: the collection and recycling of as many bottles as are placed on the market by 2030 to stop the dispersion of plastic into the environment. It is not by chance that the Group adheres to the vision of the New Plastics Economy of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, according to which plastic never becomes waste, but re-enters the economy in the form of valuable components.
by Prisca Peroni
Source: Adobe Stock
