Courtauld II – The Carbon Future 15/02/2010 00:00:10
The Courtauld Commitment was launched in 2005 by WRAP, in conjunction with leading UK grocery retailers and the British Retail Consortium.
The commitment marked a radical departure in tackling packaging waste, largely because it was voluntary in nature and has seen the number of participating organisations snowball. There are now over 40 signatories, including major retailers such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s as well as food and drink companies such as Coca Cola and Cadbury’s.
The signatories commit to working closely with WRAP to develop ways of tackling waste across the supply chain. The aim is to reduce the weight of packaging, increase the amount of recycled content and increase recyclability. It has already reached its initial target of phasing out packaging waste through design and is widely seen as a great success.
But with the current agreement due to expire this year, a new agreement is likely to be put in place very soon.
The focus of the new Courtauld Commitment will move with the times – the challenge is to tackle carbon footprinting and media speculation has focused on the role recycled content could play in assessing packaging’s environmental impact.
While Tetra Pak warmly welcomes the shift of emphasis onto carbon – and the use of recycling as a way of measuring success – we view renewability as the missing piece of the jigsaw. We believe the new Courtauld Commitment requires a more sophisticated view of measuring environmental impact of packaging – including consideration of the full lifecycle of a product.
Tetra Pak has been working hard to raise awareness of renewability both among consumers and with policy makers. We are keen to see the importance of renewability reflected across all environmental policy initiatives – from the Milk Road Map to Defra’s Packaging Strategy.
Rupert Maitland-Titterton,
Environment and Communications Director, Tetra Pak UK & Ireland
