On March 16, 2021, global snacks and snacks giant Mars Wrigley and Danimer Scientific, a company focused on the development and production of biodegradable materials, announced a two-year cooperation plan to jointly develop innovative home-use compostable packaging. The earth is more sustainable.
The goal of this cooperation is to provide new, biodegradable packaging for Mars Wrigley's brands. The first is smaller, individual packaging, which is more likely to be littered and usually less likely to be recycled. Mars Wrigley is solving this problem in various ways to support a sustainable planet. Mars Wrigley’s cooperation with Danimer Scientific will be the first to launch this program in North America. The goal is to further expand this program to other markets where the recycling infrastructure is still underdeveloped. In those markets, waste is dumped and leaked at will. The problem of entering the natural world is particularly serious. The first batch of products launched by Mars Wrigley and Danimer Scientific are mainly the Skittles® brand in the US market. The shelf time is tentatively scheduled for the end of 2021 or early 2022.
Danimer Scientific and Mars Wrigley plan to introduce Nodax® PHA into flexible and rigid packaging, which can be effectively decomposed in industrial composting facilities and backyard composting, providing a stronger value proposition for environmentally conscious consumers and retailers. Nodax PHA is derived from the seeds of plants such as rapeseed and soybeans. It can be used as a substitute for traditional petrochemical plastics and has been certified as biodegradable in soil and marine environments.
For Mars Wrigley, the cooperation with Danimer Scientific represents a step in its packaging sustainability strategy, bringing it closer to its vision of a circular economy, without making packaging wasteful. As part of the company’s $1 billion investment in the “Sustainable in a Generation Plan”, Mars Wrigley is testing a range of material solutions in markets around the world, such as single-material and paper-based alternatives , In order to gradually achieve its goals.