Heinz has spent nine years, 185,000 product development hours, 45 iterations, and $1.2 million developing a recyclable plastic bottle cap that can be recycled. The new bottle is currently available in the U.K.
The new Heinz bottle cap is constructed of mono-material polypropene, unlike the old one. The old cap had various plastics, including a hard-to-recycle silicone valve that controls ketchup flow, so recycling facilities had to physically separate it.
Heinz bottles will now have caps that won't stand out but might save hundreds of millions of bottle tops from landfills. The Kraft Heinz design received Rigid Pack of the Year at the 2023 U.K. Packaging Awards.
Plastic packaging maker Berry Global designed the cap. "Heinz set us the kind of challenge that suits us and our development departments best: to reconstruct the cap design to make it 100% recyclable without affecting the performance millions of consumers know and love
Besides making its bottle caps 100% recyclable, Heinz wants to reduce its global consumption of virgin plastic by 20% (more than 100 million pounds) by 2030.
This concept could quickly spread to other businesses that utilize plastic bottles for shampoo and lotion, reducing plastic waste in landfills.
"We can't continue as we have in the past," said Kraft Heinz Executive Vice President, Global General Counsel, and Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer Rashida La Lande.
"We are investing in innovative technologies and partnerships that are critical to helping us redesign packaging, eliminate unnecessary plastic, increase our use of recycled content, and influence the adoption of reuse models."