IN Brief:
- Mars says 67.6% of its consumer-facing packaging is designed to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable.
- The company’s packaging strategy focuses on removing unnecessary packaging, redesigning remaining formats, and investing to support circular systems.
- The update comes as food manufacturers face tighter recycled-content, recyclability, EPR, and packaging data requirements across Europe.
Mars has reported further progress on packaging circularity, with 67.6% of its consumer-facing packaging now designed to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable.
The update forms part of the group’s wider sustainable packaging programme, which covers Mars Snacking, Mars Petcare, and Mars Food. The company’s approach centres on removing unnecessary packaging, redesigning remaining formats for circularity, and investing in systems intended to keep materials in use.
Mars has highlighted progress across several brands and formats, including recycled plastic applications, paper-based wrapper work, and recyclable pouch development. The company’s packaging portfolio spans confectionery, pet food, sauces, rice, meals, snacks, and related categories, giving its circularity programme exposure to flexible films, rigid plastics, paper, pouches, jars, wrappers, and secondary packaging.
The headline percentage marks progress, although the harder work sits in the detail of individual materials and markets. A pack can be technically designed for recycling yet still lack adequate collection, sorting, or reprocessing infrastructure. That gap between design intent and practical recovery remains one of the largest barriers in food and beverage packaging.
Packaging policy is becoming more data-led across Europe. Recycled-content rules for PET beverage bottles have already moved into formal calculation and verification methods, while EPR assessment work is turning packaging data, recyclability ratings, and producer obligations into direct cost factors. Large brand owners are now redesigning packs under a system where circularity has to be evidenced, not simply declared.
Food-contact packaging makes the transition more complicated than it appears from high-level targets. Materials must protect against oxygen, moisture, aroma loss, light, grease, contamination, migration risk, breakage, and shelf-life loss. A pack that improves recyclability while increasing product waste may weaken the environmental case, especially in categories where spoilage or damage carries a significant carbon burden.
Flexible packaging remains one of the most difficult areas. Many confectionery, snack, and pet food formats rely on lightweight, high-barrier structures that perform well in manufacturing and distribution but are difficult to recycle at scale. Paper-based or mono-material alternatives can work in selected applications, although they need to survive high-speed lines, maintain seals, protect quality, and meet retailer specifications.
Food-grade recycled material remains another constraint. Demand for high-quality recyclate is increasing as regulation, retailer targets, and brand commitments converge. Supply has not always kept pace, especially where food-contact use requires controlled input streams and validated recycling processes. Competition for suitable material can increase cost and complicate procurement, particularly across global portfolios.
Mars’s progress also illustrates how packaging redesign must move across departments. Procurement teams need supplier documentation and price visibility; engineering teams need line trials and sealing data; quality teams need shelf-life validation and migration evidence; regulatory teams need market-by-market compliance; commercial teams need pack formats that still work for shoppers and retailers. A circularity target becomes a manufacturing programme once it reaches the plant.
Secondary packaging cannot be ignored either. Cases, trays, shelf-ready packs, pallet wraps, and transport packaging all affect material use and logistics efficiency. Reducing material can cut waste and cost, but over-lightweighting can create damage, instability, and handling problems. The best packaging programmes treat primary and secondary packs together, because the final environmental and commercial performance is shaped across the whole distribution system.
Mars’s latest update shows that global food manufacturers are making measurable progress, but it also exposes the complexity still ahead. Reusable, recyclable, or compostable design is only one stage. The pack must run efficiently, protect the product, satisfy food-contact rules, fit recovery infrastructure, and carry reliable data through reporting systems.
Circular packaging is moving from a sustainability commitment into a practical manufacturing discipline. The next gains will depend on material supply, recycling capacity, policy clarity, and engineering work at line level. Mars has pushed more than two thirds of its consumer-facing packaging into circular design territory; the remaining share is likely to be harder, more technical, and more expensive.
