Packaging waste: Aditya Birla Group leads the way

For businesses across the world, managing packaging waste is a challenge that has assumed enormous proportions. Packaging material, which is primarily made up of plastic, cardboard, or foam, often ends up in landfills, contaminating our soil or water bodies. India, for instance, generates around four million tonnes of plastic packaging annually, and the environmental pollution it causes is evident all around us.

With its core ethos of sustainability, the Aditya Birla Group is optimising its packaging processes across its businesses

As a responsible corporate with sustainability at the core of its operational ethos, Aditya Birla Group has already taken significant steps towards embedding sustainability in its packaging materials and processes. Through a combination of sustainable packaging processes, innovative thinking, and persistent on-ground efforts, the Group has reduced packaging waste, while accelerating the search for more sustainable alternatives. Here are some examples.

Wearing sustainability on the sleeve

The fashion industry worldwide generates a huge amount of packaging materials, including paper wrapping, cartons, plastic clips, polybags and so on. That is why, since 2013, Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail Ltd. (ABFRL) has been working on reducing the pollutant content in its packaging.

Greener garments 

Greener garmentsLast year, ABFRL started a pilot project for its brand Simon Carter, under which all plastic packaging components, barring polybags, were converted from plastic to non-pollutant and biodegradable materials. This included components like the collar traveller, butterfly, M-clip, and U-clip.

Meanwhile, Peter England launched a 'Plant a tag' initiative, which used plantable seed tags (normally used for MRP and product communication) made from a biodegradable eco paper with plant seeds embedded within. When planted in a pot of soil, the seeds grow and the paper composts away, leaving behind only plants and zero waste.

The company’s ReEarth programme focuses on enhancing the sustainability of its apparel and packaging, among other aspects of the product lifecycle, through various initiatives. These include packaging component design optimisation, and reduction and recycling of packaging material for products as well as transport packaging.

And with excellent results. ABFRL, which owns wildly popular brands like Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, and Allen Solly, and also the Pantaloons store chain, has achieved 88% sustainable packaging in FY2021 and aims for 100% by 2025.

That’s not all. Two years ago, ABFRL, through the Circular Apparel Innovation Factory initiative, took the lead to launch the #BetterThanPlastic industry challenge to find new, sustainable packaging materials. Through this collaboration, ABFRL has identified, and is studying the feasibility, of innovative packaging solutions that can be used as plastic alternatives.

Thanks to these and other efforts, ABFRL was named ‘Asia's most sustainable company’ for 2020 by S&P Global Assessment.

Cleaning up the earth

Grasim, a diversified Aditya Birla Group company with interests in textiles, cement and financial services, completely recycles the plastic packaging used in its products. Not only that, it also recycles the packaging materials used by its raw material suppliers.

Grasim is also known as a pioneer in using plant-based cellulose to create viscose stable fibre, a manmade biodegradable fibre made considered a sustainable alternative to cotton. Now, the Aditya Birla Science and Technology Company Ltd. (ABSTCL), the Group’s corporate research and development hub,  is researching how viscose-based solutions can be used in retail or apparel bags, making them far more earth-friendly.

UltraTech, a Grasim subsidiary, is another great example for the industry. The company, India’s biggest cement manufacturer, prides itself on being plastic-positive, twice over! UltraTech burns all the plastic waste collected from local communities in its plant kilns. Altogether, it disposes of 2.2 times the amount of plastic it uses for packaging its cement.

Grasim is India's pioneer in viscose stable fibre

Beating plastic at its own game

Meanwhile, the team at Birla Carbon struck upon a pretty nifty idea that may seem counterintuitive at first. The carbon black manufacturer is currently researching the idea of switching from paper to plastic packaging for its products, which are used in making tyres and mechanical goods and in specialty industries like paints, coatings, and plastics. Switching to plastic makes sense here, however. A large proportion of Birla Carbon’s European customers can use polymer-based packaging directly into their product manufacturing process. Using plastic, therefore, doesn’t just reduce the overall amount of waste generated; it improves product recyclability too.

Bagging the opportunity

One of aluminium's biggest strengths is that it can be recycled an indefinite number of times. Hence, it made perfect sense for Hindalco to substitute plastic bags used at its facilities with aluminium-based alternatives like aluminium foil-laminated jute bags. The company has also developed other packaging substitutes such as file stock and bottle caps. Thanks to these innovations, three of its facilities at Taloja (Navi Mumbai), Alupuram (Ernakulam), and Mouda (Nagpur) have been certified single-use plastic-free.

In addition to the above, Birla Carbon also implements various strategies to reduce, reuse and recycle packaging waste generated in other aspects of its business.

Around the world, there is rising consciousness about sustainable production and consumption. The Aditya Birla Group’s proactive ownership and optimisation of its packaging systems and processes is just one of the many ways the company is reinforcing its sustainability commitments to customers, local communities, regulators, and other stakeholders.