INSIDE COSTCO
R aising
THE BAR
As part of its updated sustainability initiative, Mars Wrigley Australia is making its chocolate bars more sustainable than ever before.
BY SARA YOUSEF
I
f you love chocolate and the environment, we’ ve got good news for you. Your favourite chocolate bars, including Mars and Snickers, are now more sustainable thanks to a paperbased packaging initiative on products purchased through Costco warehouses.
“ Our transition to paper-based packaging is an important milestone in our sustainability journey,” explains Penrose West, Customer Director at Mars Wrigley Australia.“ We know that our chocolate bars are primarily eaten on the go, therefore we knew that we had to find a solution to our packaging on these products that could be recycled within the current Australian recycling infrastructure.”
Planning for the future
Australia’ s waste generation has increased by 20 percent over the past 15 years and concern for the impact on our environment is at record levels. But, as individuals, there’ s only so much we can do; the people with the real power to enact change work for large corporations and retailers. This is what made the team at Mars Wrigley Australia determined to make a difference.
“ We embarked on what would end up being a three-year project and more than $ 2.5 million invested to find the right material that supported the quality and freshness of our bars, and could run efficiently on our manufacturing lines, as well as being able to be easily recycled by consumers,” says West.
The resulting paper-based packaging is being rolled out across Mars Wrigley’ s entire chocolate bar portfolio and has removed more than 300 tonnes of virgin plastic from the company’ s value chain. If you stretched this out, it would equate to the same distance as travelling from
Melbourne to London and back again. And the impact doesn’ t stop at Australian shores. Globally, 61 percent of Mars Wrigley’ s consumer-facing packaging is designed to be reusable, recyclable or compostable. The company has also eliminated 99 percent of PVC and is using 3200 metric tonnes of recycled content across its product portfolio.
“ It’ s been a huge whole-of-business journey, but we’ re incredibly proud to have this new packaging in-market and to be reducing our environmental impact,” says West.
COSTCO CONNECTION
Paper-based packaging is now available on all Mars and Snickers bars in warehouses nationwide.
12 | JAN / FEB 2025 COSTCO CONNECTION