Heineken
Heineken and Link working in partnership to reduce plastic waste through the value chain
The challenge
Worldwide, we consume approximately 100 million tons of plastic each year. Plastic is cheap, clean, durable and provides excellent protection when used to package all manner of products and goods. Hard to beat? It certainly seems so, on first glance. However, there are alternatives which have a much lower environmental impact, both in production and end-of-life stages of the product lifecycle.
Heineken have set themselves robust zero waste to landfill and emissions reduction targets which Link is helping to deliver through the value chain.
Sometimes the simplest solutions work best.
The results
Link’s team worked closely with Heineken to help reduce the carbon impact of their campaign materials. For example, fabric folded chairs are usually packed in large polybags which are discarded to landfill. But, with careful planning and some extra testing, our team created an optimised packing solution which prevented the use of 50,000 polybags, saving enough energy to charge 3,000 smartphones.
Another example from Mexico is the iconic ‘beer bucket’, historically made from 100% virgin plastic. In line with Heineken’s sustainability aspirations, we replaced 75% of the material with recycled plastic, reducing the products overall emissions from 28 tons down to just 10 tons of CO2e. A big impact for a single project in one market.
Link’s team continues to assess Heineken’s full range of marketing & promotional materials to identify more opportunities to help create sustainable solutions for their customers.
“We challenged ourselves to become more sustainable in our marketing operations and Link's team has worked hard to develop some very creative solutions which help reduce our overall environmental footprint”
Luis Martinez - Heineken