Recycling Operations

Significance

Importance To Berry Global and our Stakeholders

Our recycling operations are a critical part of our business that allow us to develop a more sustainable and circular approach to product design. By recycling plastic waste, we help reduce the need for virgin materials, reduce our overall environmental footprint, and meet the growing market demand for sustainable products. Our recycling operations enable circularity, demonstrate environmental responsibility, and help us meet the expectations of our stakeholders. 

Our Customers: Our recycling operations allow us to help our customers achieve their recycled content commitments and Scope 3 GHG reduction goals as well as comply with regulations. Our recycling capabilities also allow us to achieve the quality and consistency they demand. 

Our Investors: Our recycling operations showcase our commitment to long-term sustainability and highlight our growth potential, given the expected increased demand for recycled plastic to meet brand owner commitments and regulatory needs.

Our Approach

Berry Global is one of the world’s leading plastic recyclers with the current ability to recycle around 350 million pounds (160,000 MT) annually of PCR and PIR plastic. In addition, we strive to recover as much of our internal scrap as possible, with most of our manufacturing sites across the globe having invested in recycling equipment.  

Our recycling operations have grown through a combination of strategic acquisitions of existing infrastructure, equipment upgrades, and the development of new recycling facilities. This approach enables us to integrate circularity into our business model and gives us access to a reliable source of recycled content to incorporate back into our products, reducing our dependence on virgin, fossil-based resin. We further utilize our infrastructure to provide customers with food-grade packaging and develop recycling solutions for their specific product lines. 

Highlights and Target progress

Key Metrics

Key Strategies

We maintain four large-scale recycling business units, each offering unique solutions for creating a circular economy for plastics. Berry Circular Polymers collaborates with customers to supply recycling solutions for their products by providing mechanically recycled household waste substrate for contact-sensitive applications (CleanStream®). Our Berry Circular Polymers Flexibles business has flexible film recycling infrastructure for both flexible packaging and agricultural films. This includes specialized recycling wash plants focused on recycling highly contaminated waste and robust chain of custody methodologies for its Sustane® product line.

We have increased our capacity across our recycling operations from 220 million lbs. in 2020 to 350 million lbs. in 2023. We have no targets in place relating to recycling capacity or total plastic recycled, but by increasing our recycling capacity, we make progress towards our targets of increasing PCR usage across our product portfolio. Increased recycling capabilities across the industry also help drive progress toward goals relating to the recyclability of products, especially for products requiring specialized recycling infrastructure. Progress towards our PCR and recyclability-related targets can be found on the Circular Economy: Product Innovation.

Berry Circular Polymers - Leamington Spa, UK

Berry Circular Polymer’s recycling facility in Leamington Spa, UK is capable of handling highly contaminated waste, and we are continually working to increase the quality of the recycled material. This will enable us to incorporate more recycled content into our products, in line with our target of 10% post-consumer recycled content across our fast-moving consumer goods packaging by 2025. 

Our CleanStream® process delivers Europe’s first approved post-consumer resin for contact-sensitive applications from an open-loop process. The technology has recently been granted a Letter of No Objection (LNO) for food-contact approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), and we are working towards obtaining similar approvals from UK and European regulatory authorities.

The Leamington Spa facility is capable of processing over 40% of all post-consumer polypropylene collected for recycling in the UK.  The outputs are already being used across our product range to support our customers’ sustainability objectives. 

Further information on our recycling infrastructure can be found on our dedicated Berry Circular Polymers page

As one of Europe’s largest recyclers of polyethylene film, our Berry Circular Polymers Flexibles recycling and manufacturing sites reprocess over 50,000 tons annually from industrial, commercial, agricultural, and domestic sources across four sites in the UK and Germany. Recycling since the 1970s, the business has dedicated recycling facilities for recovering both PIR and PCR. Most of the recycling output is used within our own manufacturing operations for products as diverse as consumer and industrial packaging, refuse sacks, building films, and our plastic lumber product, Plaswood. The Berry Circular Polymers Flexibles business unit has a product recovery target in place, with the goal of achieving a 33% product recovery rate across all Berry Circular Polymers Flexibles products for recycling. Currently around 14% of Berry Circular Polymers Flexibles’s products are recovered.

Within Berry Circular Polymers Flexibles, we have also adopted a robust chain of custody methodology to substantiate the recycled content claims for our Sustane® range of products made from recycled plastic. Through third-party accreditation such as EUCertPlast and RecyClass, we help ensure products comply with specific standards for safety, quality, and performance and reassure customers of the integrity, consistency, transparency, traceability, and accurate accounting of the recycled content.

Berry Berry Circular Polymers Flexibles’s recycling operations in Steinfeld reprocess post-consumer single variety film waste into regranulate for use in new packaging products. The facility has two recycling lines, one of which uses Berry's proprietary Norec® de-inking process that de-contaminates and recycles post-consumer printed PE films. 

Our facility in Victoria, Texas recycles post-commercial film, e.g., stretch wrap, as well as internal scrap through a multi-step process including sorting, extrusion, and filtration. Berry Global is the largest producer of stretch wrap in the United States, so this is an important initiative in our efforts to create a circular economy for our products. The recycled plastic generated from this operation is then consumed at all of our sites producing consumer trash bags and institutional can liners across North America, including Victoria, Texas. 

Disclosures

Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

Our recycling operations help eliminate potential pollution to water bodies and sanitation services by efficiently managing waste.
 

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

By investing in recycling operations and using recycled content within our products, we enhance sustainable practices within the industry, driving improvement and fostering the development of further innovative recycling technologies.

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

Implementing recycling operations in our cities and communities helps contribute to sustainable urban growth by reducing waste generation and promoting sustainable material sourcing.

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

Our recycling operations directly addresses responsible consumption and production by reusing materials and reducing waste, helping to advance a circular economy, encourage resource efficiency, and reduce the environmental impact of our industry. 

SDG 13: Climate Action

Our recycling operations reduce the requirements for new plastics and the energy-intensive processes associated with their manufacture, thus mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, and enhancing alignment with a sustainable path for climate and net-zero action.

SDG 14: Life below Water

By reducing the volume of plastic waste that has the potential to enter water bodies, our recycling operations directly address marine pollution and align with the preservation of marine life and ecosystems.

SDG 15: Life on Land

We help preserve vital habitats and ecosystems through sustainable waste diversion practices such as recycling that significantly reduce the mismanagement of waste and minimize the volume of waste sent to landfill.

SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

By Leading collaborative efforts across the industry to drive demand for recycled content and sustainable practices, we foster the development of new recycling infrastructure and innovative technology.

GRI and SASB Alignment

Last updated: December 14th 2023