Over 64m schoolchildren get milk in Tetra Pak packaging

Tetra Pak, the world leader in food processing and packaging solutions, has announced its sustainability update 2014 report – highlighting the company’s achievements in environmental performance, social responsibility and good governance.

According to the report, in 2013 more than 64 million school children received milk or other nutritious drinks in Tetra Pak packages. For instance, Tetra Pak’s involvement in a school milk programme in Myanmar, launched in June 2013, enabled 45,000 school children to receive safe, packaged milk for three years.

Tetra Pak and Tetra Laval Food for Development expanded joint activities on dairy hubs. In partnership with PRAN Dairy, two dairy hubs were set up in Bangladesh as collection stations with testing and cooling facilities, while at the same time serving as training centres for local farmers. This has enabled the average daily yield per cow to rise by 80 per cent and the average monthly income of 2,000 small-holder farmers to more than double from October 2010 to December 2013.

The company has continued to lead the industry towards fully renewable packages. In 2013, 1.1 billion packages were delivered to customers featuring bio-based caps (made from plastic derived from sugar cane), nearly doubling the number sold in 2012.

Tetra Pak’s processing and packaging innovations supported a further reduction of food waste. The introduction of Tetra Alcross RO Lite in 2013 provided small and medium-sized cheese producers with a filtration solution that extracts value out of whey, a by-product of cheese manufacturing that was dumped as food waste in the past.

Meanwhile, the company put considerable effort into developing systems and methods to collect climate data. The 2013 results, which have been audited and validated by independent external consultants, showed the company is making steady progress towards its 2020 targets – to cap climate impact across the value chain to 2010 levels, despite business growth.

“The Tetra Pak brand is founded on a promise: Protect What’s Good. At its core, that’s about protecting food… which has long been at the very heart of our business agenda. 

“But it goes further. It is also about protecting people: our employees, the communities in which we operate, and society as a whole. And it is about 

protecting futures; by developing the products and services that will support the future business growth of our customers, and by acting and operating in ways that best protect the future of our planet,” said Dennis Jansson, president and CEO, Tetra Pak Group.

“Tetra Pak produces the sustainability update on an annual basis to explain how we are delivering on that promise,” he added.