Pledges commitment to tackle plastic pollution in line with the company’s sustainability goals
Tata Consumer Products, the consumer products Company uniting the principal food and beverage interests of the Tata Group under one umbrella, has signed up as a founding member of the India Plastics Pact. The India Plastics Pact is a collaboration between the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and WWF India that brings together multiple stakeholders to set time-bound target-based commitments to transform the current linear plastics system into a circular plastics economy.
The Pact seeks to transform the entire plastics value chain through a public-private collaboration that enables innovative ways to eliminate, reuse, or recycle the plastic packaging across the plastics value chain. This initiative unites businesses, the informal waste sector, governments, local authorities, and NGOs involved in producing, selling, collecting and reprocessing plastic, to work towards ambitious collective targets for change by 2030.
Ajit Krishnakumar, Chief Operating Officer of Tata Consumer Products commenting on the pact said, “The India Plastics Pact is an important and much needed initiative that will yield social, economic and environmental benefits. At Tata Consumer Products, sustainability lies at the core of our overall business approach and we are happy to partner with other stakeholders to help transform the plastics value chain. Creating circular economy in plastics is a key part of our sustainability strategy and we look forward to making a positive impact. Tata Consumer is also a member of the UK Plastics Pact.”
The Pact targets, envisaged to be achieved by 2030, are developed to address the complex and long-standing challenges faced by the country and serve as a framework to counter them. The details of the four targets are as follows:
- Target 1: Define a list of unnecessary or problematic plastic packaging and items and take measures to address them through redesign and innovation
- Target 2: 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable or recyclable
- Target 3: 50% of plastic packaging to be effectively recycled
- Target 4: 25% average recycled content across all plastic packaging
The targets will drive circularity of plastics and help tackle pollution, but will also deliver significant GHG reduction through the reduction in fossil-derived plastics, greater use of recycled plastics and increase in recycling.
About Tata Consumer Products Limited
Tata Consumer Products Limited is a focused consumer products company uniting the principal food and beverage interests of the Tata Group under one umbrella. The Company’s portfolio of products includes tea, coffee, water, RTDs, salt, pulses, spices, ready-to-cook offerings, breakfast cereals, snacks and mini meals. Tata Consumer Products is the 2nd largest branded tea company in the world. Its key beverage brands include Tata Tea, Tetley, Eight O’Clock Coffee, Tata Coffee Grand, Himalayan Natural Mineral Water, Tata Water Plus and Tata Gluco Plus. Its foods portfolio includes brands such as Tata Salt, Tata Sampann and Tata Soulfull. In India, Tata Consumer Products has a reach of over 200 million households, giving it an unparalleled ability to leverage the Tata brand in consumer products. The Company has an annual turnover of ~Rs. 11,600 cr with operations in India and International markets. For more information, please visit www.tataconsumer.com
About India Plastics Pact
The India Plastics Pact is an ambitious, collaborative initiative that brings together businesses, governments, researchers, NGOs and other stakeholder across the whole value chain to set timebound target based commitments to transform the current linear plastics system into a circular plastics economy. The pact is a collaboration between WWF India and CII—anchored at the CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development (CESD), and supported by WRAP, a global NGO based in the UK. WRAP is providing operational and technical support to many other Plastics Pacts, as well as running the UK Plastics Pact. The Plastics Pact envisions ‘a world where plastic is valued and does not pollute the environment. It aims to achieve this by promoting a circular economy for plastics through a public-private collaboration that enables innovative ways to eliminate, reuse, or recycle the plastic packaging across the plastics value chain and collectively achieve the long-term targets. It is the first Plastics Pact of its kind in Asia with a unified national framework for a circular economy for plastics, creating structured, coherent and aligned collective targets, with associated reporting. For more information, please visit www.indiaplasticspact.org