Smurfit Kappa is committed to circularity

Packaging company Smurfit Kappa is an industry leader in innovation, circularity, and collaboration. The company works with the materials of the future: paper and cardboard. These are produced from the renewable raw material wood and is biodegradable and recyclable. The multinational is originally from Ireland and now operates in 35 countries. Its customers are located everywhere in sectors such as industry, agriculture, food, pharmaceutical, retail and e-commerce.

Impact through innovation

Smurfit Kappa help all these customers with innovative solutions to reduce the use of plastic. It helps customers in the food sector to replace the plastic containers on the fruit and vegetable shelves with paper ones. And for products where six-packs are often still held together with plastic, it produces a paper-based solution. Recyclable, biodegradable and with a 30% lower carbon footprint than shrink-wrap packaging.

For the agricultural sector, it produces compostable paper to replace the plastic that farmers use to protect their crops and the soil. A little further afield, banana growers wrap plastic bags around the bunches for the same reason. Smurfit Kappa has produced a paper-based sustainable and biodegradable alternative for this.

The company encourages collaboration with all parties in the chain, from sellers to transport operators, and it aims to minimise the environmental impact of packaging and transporting goods. Smurfit teaches companies such as Amazon how to ship its products in a more sustainable, smarter and compact way. Less wasted space during transport means more packages and boxes can be transported per load, which leads to lower costs and emissions.

Smurfit also develops tools that web shops can use to test the robustness of packaging to prevent returns and the additional CO₂ emissions that go with it.

Circular approach

Smurfit Kappa has a circular business model. Everything it produces is suitable for recycling. It strives to replace renewable raw materials such as wood with sustainable alternatives for its sustainable packaging material. Around 75% of the raw material of its packaging and paper mills already consists of recycled fibres from paper and cardboard. The packaging produced can be recycled six to eight times, and once the fibres are used up, the material is used in agriculture or for energy generation. From web shops to transport operators: all links in the chain are involved in its circular system.

Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) were defined by the United Nations as global sustainable development goals for 2030. Through its products and operating procedures, Smurfit Kappa contribute to several sustainable development goals:

This is a translation of an article published by Triodos Bank. Text by Liselot van Kesteren.