Taco Bell's Waste-Reduction Crusade: Reusing Sauce Packets
Fast-food giant Taco Bell is pioneering a nationwide project, enabling customers to mail back their used sauce packets, thanks to collaboration with eco-friendly company TerraCycle. This program—initially announced in April—aims to keep as many sauce packets out of landfills as possible and pave the way for their reuse.
Customers can sign up for a TerraCycle account, stash their empty sauce packets in recyclable containers, print a free shipping label from TerraCycle's website, and send the box back via UPS. With QR codes and signage introduced in Taco Bell restaurants, customers are encouraged to register and support the initiative.
While most transactions occur on the drive-thru or outside the restaurant, Taco Bell opts for this mailing alternative due to the high number of takeaways. As evidenced during the pilot run, customers preferred this method for minimizing packaging and shipping once the packets were filled with sauce.
Thousands of tonnes of disposed sauce packets yearly can cause substantial environmental damage. Given this trend, according to a Science journal study, if no actions are taken, roughly 710 million metric tonnes of plastic will pollute the environment by 2040.
Taco Bell is one of the first food brands to collaborate with TerraCycle, an organization from New Jersey working with large corporations to become more environmentally friendly. Previously, TerraCycle partnered with Procter & Gamble (PG), Unilever (UL), and Nestlé to develop reusable packaging alternatives to replace wasteful one-time use containers.
Taco Bell hopes that by 2025, all packaging used at its 7,000 global locations will be fully recyclable, compostable, or reusable. The company declared the initiative "a first step but not the last" towards building a more sustainable brand.
According to statements made in 2022, Taco Bell considered discontinuing its popular Mexican pizza due to packaging issues, with over 7 million pounds of paper used annually.
Sources:
- edition.cnn.com
