Mars brand Kind’s snacks bar series delivers more environmental packaging

A significant environmental improvement measure has been confirmed by Mars, Incorporated, with its Kind snack bar now being designed with packaging incorporating recycled material, writes Neill Barston.

As the company explained to Confectionery Production, the move means the product line contains less virgin plastic than previous products, underscoring the company’s commitment to help deliver a circular economy.

The business said that its new packaging is produced through the recycling of used mixed plastic that would otherwise be destined for incineration or landfill, in effect meaning it can be placed in drop-off recycling in the UK, and kerbside recycling in Ireland.

This transition to packaging designed for maximum circularity is the latest innovation in Mars Incorporated’s strategy to reimagine and redesign all packaging. Mars Incorporated. is focused on reducing the use of new virgin plastic by 25%, incorporating 30% recycled content into plastic packaging, and redesigning more than 12,000 packaging components across a diverse portfolio to fit with the recycling infrastructure that either exists today or is likely to exist in the future.

Barry Parkin, Chief Procurement & Sustainability Officer at Mars Incorporated believed the measure would have a key impact. He said: “At Mars Incorporated, we want to contribute to a circular economy where packaging material never becomes waste, but is recycled, reused or composted. For this to happen, we need new solutions and infrastructure to change the recycling landscape and to compliment mechanical recycling. Today marks another important step in accelerating our sustainable packaging journey and in our collaboration with partners like SABIC that are enabling new opportunities to provide consumers with packaging designed for circularity.”

Peter Morris, General Manager at KIND Snacks UK commented that the brand was committed to delivering the most sustainable packaging possible, adding that its latest measure ‘marks a milestone towards achieving this vision, and we look forward to driving further positive and long-lasting changes to our packaging in the future.”

As the company confirmed, the project is a unique ‘closed loop’ collaboration, designed in partnership with SABIC, Landbell, Plastic Energy, Taghleef, and SIT. Together, the partnership has created a lighter weight wrapper from recyclable monomaterial polypropylene for KIND, removing the need to use complex laminated plastic incorporating multi-material layers.