Corporate sustainability reporting during 2015 crystallized a wave of 2025 packaging targets among multinational brand owners whose purchasing decisions drive flexible packaging specification changes across global converter networks. PepsiCo's 2015 sustainability report articulated a 2025 goal to design 100 percent of packaging to be recoverable or recyclable while partnering to increase recovery and recycling rates.
PepsiCo documented removing approximately 100 million pounds of packaging materials from the market in 2015 through optimization and redesign initiatives, generating roughly $25 million in cost savings while increasing food-grade recycled PET usage to 139 million pounds—a 4 percent year-over-year increase demonstrating recycled content scaling alongside lightweighting.
Unilever reinforced its commitment that all plastic packaging be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025, with parallel targets to increase recycled plastic content to at least 25 percent by 2025 against a 2015 baseline. Unilever explicitly identified multilayer flexible film and sachet recycling as a technical priority requiring value-chain collaboration and new reprocessing solutions.
These 2025 horizons translated into immediate converter RFQ requirements during 2015: document recyclability pathways, reduce material complexity where barrier performance allowed, and provide data supporting packaging weight reduction per consumer use against prior-year baselines.
Flexible packaging equipment buyers noted that brand 2025 commitments accelerated qualification trials for mono-PE pouches, all-PE laminates, and solventless adhesive systems compatible with structures intended for emerging film collection streams— even where full collection infrastructure remained incomplete at target announcement.