Warnez potatoes takes on the circular challenge

Research into circular models for potato packaging

Peter Van Steenkiste: "We defined five circular challenges:

• fairtrade & healthy crops
• future-proof production 
• circular packaging
• green logistics 
• close-the-loop partnerships

We’re entering a new era with these goals; the age of the circular economy. There are great opportunities and challenges for us in purchasing circular packaging. We have to move, step by step, from linear to recycling to circular, where we’re following the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s recommendations concerning packaging:

• Avoid problematic or unnecessary plastic by incorporating new design, innovations, and new delivery methods
• reuse where possible
• 100% reuse, recycle or compost all plastic packaging
• completely separate the use of plastic from finite natural resources
• remove all hazardous chemicals from plastic packaging and respect the health, safety and rights of everybody involved.

We’re currently investigating three avenues; switching to paper, bioplastic, and the design of a retail display where the customer can choose reusable packaging. Cooperation is an essential element here, as we have to get both the suppliers of the packaging and the customers (retail) on board.

We’ve set two major goals for 2020:

1. 95% of the packaging offered to customers is recyclable
2. 33% of the consumer packaging offered is biobased.

A concrete example: In April 2020, we’ll introduce a new range to a retail customer. We’re reducing the amount of petroleum-based plastic by more than 90%, which will save more than 100 tonnes of oil-based plastic."