Aldi and Pact Take Household Packaging to 50% Recycled Content. What It Takes

By Joe Joo · 8PCK · Shantou

Packaging Insights reports Aldi and Pact lifting recycled content to 50% in a household pack. The interesting part is not the number — it is what had to change to hold it.

What Changed

At 50 %, clear PET turns warmer and slightly hazier. For a pack that has to read white or water-clear, that means either accepting a shift, adding a pigment, or moving to a different grade. Each of those is a decision made at the mould, not at the artwork.

The second constraint is supply. Food-grade rPET is not a commodity pool: it is sorted, washed and authorised per process, and the tonnage available at a given grade is finite. A 50 % commitment is partly a purchasing commitment — a supplier has to be able to hold the grade across a season.

The third is documentation. A 50 % claim needs a per-batch declaration naming the grade and the percentage, and a food-contact file that covers the recycled input. Mass balance figures are legitimate accounting but they are not physical content, and a retailer audit will ask which one is being claimed.

For a bottle buyer the practical questions are: what grade, what percentage, is the declaration per batch, and does the clear pack still read clear. If the answer to the last one is no, the pack has changed colour and the label artwork has to follow.