The majority of Molson Coors’ packaging materials are currently recyclable, refillable and/or light-weighted. All of our bottles and cans include recycled materials, and many consist of up to 75 percent recycled content. To create sustainable packaging – from concept design to packaging finalization – we systematically consider metrics including:
- Greenhouse Gas Emissions (tonnes CO2e per unit of production)
- Average Distance to Transport
- Recycle Content
- Recovery Value
- Energy or Recyclability Innovation Different from Industry Standard
Packaging in the US
The MillerCoor packaging strategy focuses on using recycled content, eliminating material through light-weighting, waste packaging segregation and recycling and Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA). In addition, MillerCoors'; 2015 target is to reduce overall annual weight of retail packaging materials by two percent versus 2008. Throughout 2011, they remained on track to meet this goal.
Packaging in the UK
Molson Coors UK invested £6.3 million in state-of-the-art packaging technology in the UK, meaning Carling – the UK's best selling beer – is now packaged in film instead of cardboard. This reduces the weight of secondary packaging by 63 percent and reduces carbon emissions by four percent. Additionally, as ink coverage is now less than five percent of the overall packaging weight, the film is 100 percent recyclable.
As a signatory of WRAP's Courtauld Commitment 2, Molson Coors UK has also agreed to support reduced weight, increased recycling rates and increased recycled content for packaging to achieve industry targets of reducing:
- Carbon impact of all grocery packaging by 10 percent
- Grocery product and packaging waste in the grocery supply chain by five percent
- Household food and drink waste by four percent
Since 2008, in the UK we have reduced paper/card by 1,033 tons (two percent), aluminum by 367 tons (21 percent) and steel by 1,671 tons (24 percent).
Packaging in Canada
Our packaging reduction targets for Canada are in line with our long-term goal of achieving world-class brewery packaging targets. Our current achievements include:
- Bottles made with 40 to 50 percent recycled content (30 percent post-consumer)
- Cartons made with 17 percent recycled content (10 percent pre-consumer; seven percent post-consumer)
- Aluminum cans made with a minimum 67 percent recycled content (up from 42 percent in 2007)
- Kegs – 14 percent of our volume – are refilled more than 200 times over their 25 year lifespan
- 100 percent of returned glass bottles not reused are recycled into new bottles or fiber glass, representing eight percent of the global volume and an average refill of 14 times
- 100 percent of returned aluminum cans are recycled into aluminum sheets for new cans and other products
- 100 percent of returned corrugate and boxboard packaging is recycled into corrugate boxes, toweling, tissue, beer coasters and other products (23,650 tons returned for recycling from our breweries in 2007)