Tetra Pak: Ensuring Responsible Aluminium in our Supply Chain
Julian Fox, Director, Nature Programmes at Tetra Pak, explains how creating a pull for ASI certified material reinforces their collaborative approach to protecting what’s good.
11 December 2024
Responsible aluminium sourcing matters to us
Our Aluminium Stakeholder Initiative (ASI) Membership matters because it’s an important part of how we live up to our promise to protect what’s good: protecting food, people and the planet.
We purchase and use around 140,000 tonnes of aluminium foil every year and the ASI standards are key to ensuring that we source this responsibly – taking care of all people involved in the supply of aluminium foil and minimising the impacts on nature.
Our involvement with ASI dates back to its inception in 2009
In 2009, we became part of the Responsible Aluminium Working Group, a global multi-stakeholder initiative who co-founded what then became ASI. We joined the ASI in 2015 in the Production and Transformation membership class so that we could contribute to drafting the ASI Chain of Custody standard, based on our experience operating a Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) Chain of Custody. We then moved to the Industrial Users membership class before our first certification in 2018, and subsequently required our suppliers of aluminium foil to become certified ASI members in the Production and Transformation class.
The ASI standards have inspired us on our sustainability transformation journey
In 2023, 99.6% of our aluminium volumes were delivered by suppliers certified according to the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI) Performance Standard, which addresses greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water use, biodiversity, human and labour rights and occupational health and safety (OHS). We set our suppliers’ GHG emissions targets (tonnes CO2e/tonne primary aluminium), inspired by the ASI Performance Standard v2 target for aluminium smelting in Section 5.3 b:
- 2020 target…………… 8.0 tonnes CO2e/tonne
- 2025 target…………… 5.5 tonnes CO2e/tonne
- 2030 target…………… 4.0 tonnes CO2e/tonne
Between 2019 to 2023, the average emission factor of the alufoil supplied by to us has been reduced from 9.4 to 7.4 tonnes CO2e/tonne.
We also require our suppliers to supply us with ASI-certified aluminium foil, meaning that certification to both the ASI Performance and Chain of Custody Standards must be in place at every step in the value chain, including that of the supplying company. Our target is to reach 100% by 2025; to date we have achieved 32%, working with our suppliers to source aluminium traceable to ASI certified alumina and bauxite. This target is part of our Approach to Nature and can also be found in our flagship supplier initiative: ‘Join us in protecting the planet’, involving 45 of our base materials suppliers. Our goal with this initiative is to boost collaboration with our suppliers and identify opportunities to improve environmental and social performance in our joint supply chains, together. Focus areas include climate impact reduction, assessing and addressing their impact on nature, maximising the use of recycled content and addressing human rights impacts. These 45 suppliers account for 90% of the base materials we purchase. It is also thanks to this initiative that we managed to reduce the absolute climate impact from our base materials by 22% by 2023 (baseline: 2019).
We still look to ASI standards as a guiding light
Certification to ASI standards of all alumina refining and bauxite mining operations in our sourcing is a key part of reaching our upstream targets for nature, and we can only make this happen in collaboration with our suppliers and ASI.
Consult Tetra Pak’s website
Consult Tetra Pak’s approach to sustainability
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
