6 Major Brands Team Up to Replace Plastic with Paper

Six of the world's biggest consumer brands are joining forces to solve one of packaging's toughest problems: replacing the plastic pouches and wrappers that protect everything from snacks to shampoo.

The PaperFlex Consortium, launched by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, brings together Unilever, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Mars. Their mission is to create paper-based packaging that actually works at the scale and cost the world needs.

Flexible plastic packaging like sachets, wrappers, and pouches is the fastest-growing type of plastic packaging worldwide. Right now, scalable recycled solutions for these materials simply don't exist in most places.

"Responsible paper-based flexible packaging solutions don't yet exist at the performance, scale, and cost required," says Sander Defruyt, strategy lead for plastics at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The consortium signals real ambition from these companies to help scale them.

The companies are investing in trials for biodegradable coatings and other technologies designed to create a circular packaging economy. Each founding member can develop packaging strategies for their own products while working together toward shared goals.

Unilever reported it's either met its 2025 plastic packaging goals or is on track to meet future targets. This year, the company is ramping up its focus on transitioning to paper-based flexible packaging.

The Ripple Effect

The consortium is open to other companies, innovators, suppliers, and investors who want to join. That means the breakthroughs developed by these six giants could become available to smaller companies and markets that need sustainable solutions most.

Industry partnerships like this one are becoming more common as companies recognize they can't solve packaging challenges alone. Mars global VP Allison Lin notes that partnerships with structured oversight and independent convenors help "accelerate the development of more sustainable packaging in ways that no single company could achieve alone."

Other similar initiatives are already showing promise. In the UK, Nestlé, KFC, and McDonald's are backing a packaging waste reduction pilot focused on collection and recycling. In Belgium, several companies are trialing invisible digital watermarks to help sort flexible packaging for recycling.

Gilles Demaurex, Head of Global Packaging Development at Nestlé, believes paper-based flexible packaging can play a valuable role in reducing virgin plastic and minimizing waste. "By joining our efforts under the PaperFlex Consortium, promising paper innovations will be developed and deployed responsibly at scale faster and at lower cost."

When the world's biggest brands work together, real change becomes possible.