This Proof Point is for products where the full lifecycle of the packaging has been considered and the circular economy principles of reduce, reuse, and recycle have been factored in to reduce landfill waste.
In order to qualify for this claim, at a minimum, the packaging must be partly recycled, kerbside-recyclable and refillable.
The criteria for this claim has been set intentionally high as ‘circular economy’ claims, when used incorrectly or poorly defined, can be accused of greenwashing, and have the potential to be scrutinised by regulators.
To submit evidence for this claim via the Provenance platform, approved evidence used for the following claims should be collated and resubmitted for this claim: Partly or Fully Recycled, Widely Recyclable and Refill Solution. We recommend merging the PDFs, which can be done for free via online PDF-merge tools such as https://www.ilovepdf.com/merge_pdf
Please note compostable or bio-based plastics won’t be accepted and any paper or board used must come from sustainably managed forests e.g. FSC-certified or similar.
While it can be argued that the partly recycled packaging requirement of the criteria doesn’t completely match the principles of the circular economy as it means virgin materials will be used, we took this decision for two reasons. Firstly, while the criteria hard to meet, we thought it was important to be realistic and meet the market where it is in regard to recycled material; not many companies, particularly SMEs, can afford fully recycled material and the criteria for the Partly Recycled Packaging claim, sets reasonably high thresholds for partly recycled packaging. Secondly, products that meet this claim’s criteria still very much achieve the circular economy aim of keeping materials in-use.