Taco Bell is turning to its hot sauce packets to help achieve its sustainability goal amid a push among many companies to reduce packaging waste.
On Monday, the fast-food chain announced that it is collaborating with TerraCycle on a potential recycling strategy for hot sauce packets that end up in the trash or a kitchen drawer.
Taco Bell takes up a large number of these packets, about 8.2 billion in the U.S. per year. It plans to begin a pilot program in 2022 to recycle some of those packets. The company desires that every strategy developed to be "easy and free."
"In the food industry today, there is no widely available solution for recycling flexible film packets that are so commonly used for condiments," Liz Matthews, Taco Bell's global chief food innovation officer, said in a statement.
As the popularity of takeout has increased, so has concern about the reusability of plastic packaging-though many of the efforts are now centered on traditional items such as straws, coffee cups, and salad containers.
TerraCycle already collaborates on reusable packaging with a variety of major brands, including McDonald's and Burger King. It has also worked with Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Nestlé to help manufacture reusable packaging in place of single-use packages that end up in landfills.
Taco Bell wants to make all its packaging recycling, compostable, or reusable by 2025, making the hot sauce packet recycling program critical. It could also come up with a solution that goes beyond Taco Bell.
The results of this pilot recycling program are expected to assist Taco Bell in determining the safest, most environmentally sustainable solutions going forward, and if the pilot program is successful, it will lead to an expansion.
This effort takes us one step closer to keeping packets out of landfills and our mission of 'Eliminating the Idea of Waste,'" TerraCycle CEO and Founder, Tom Szaky, said.
