Tetra Pak updates its Approach to Nature, strengthening actions in responsible sourcing and water resilience

Tetra Pak has updated its award-winning “Approach to Nature” after two years of implementation across its value chain, strengthening responsible sourcing and water resilience initiatives to broaden its focus on areas where it can maximize positive contributions and address its most significant nature-related impacts.

“For us, operating throughout our value chain with a focus on nature is part of our business strategy,” says Guilherme Camargo, Tetra Pak's Director for Nature. “We work on developing, reviewing, and implementing strategies that strengthen the responsible management of natural resources in all operations, in order to guarantee best practices and corporate sustainability commitments,” he adds.

Initially launched in 2024, Tetra Pak's "Approach to Nature" establishes more than twenty targets that guide actions across the value chain to halt and reverse nature losses, restore ecosystems, and strengthen global water security, in line with international biodiversity goals.

Reflecting the lessons learned during its implementation, the company made focused updates to the structure to prioritize areas where it can generate greater results. This shaped a more targeted approach, concentrating resources on high-impact materials, locations, and suppliers, with clearer expectations of traceability, verification, and measurable results.

The Nature Approach will continue to be structured around four main areas of action across the value chain --Upstream, Operations, Downstream, and Transformation--, with a reinforced emphasis on upstream activities, where the company's most significant impacts and dependencies on nature are concentrated.

This includes targeted reviews of selected goals, such as the use of geographic information systems to verify deforestation-free status in priority supply locations and a 10% reduction in total water withdrawal by 2030 from suppliers with the greatest water resource impacts.

The project also addresses close collaboration with suppliers, involving its entire base in assessments of environmental impacts and establishing relevant purchasing requirements. It also focuses on strengthening responsible sourcing practices, obtaining 100% of the paper-based materials used in its products from FSC™-certified sources and other controlled sources, as well as 100% of its plant-based polymers certified by Bonsucro.

There was also progress in water resilience initiatives, ensuring that high-impact suppliers report data on water quality and quantity, as well as introducing targets to reduce the intensity of water withdrawals from these suppliers.

Furthermore, the company has achieved its air pollution reduction targets ahead of schedule, demonstrating how greater focus and prioritization can accelerate impacts, by reaching the 2030 goal of reducing volatile organic compound emissions from its production units by 50% compared to 2019.

“Two years of implementation have given us a much clearer vision. The update to our Approach to Nature reflects a shift towards more precise execution, focusing actions where they can generate the greatest positive impact for nature across the entire value chain,” says Francesca Priora, Vice President of Climate and Nature at Tetra Pak.

The framework also includes efforts to support the transition to a circular economy through improvements in product design and performance, more efficient equipment, and an optimized approach to waste collection, recycling, and management.