We're making pallets from recycled packaging
As part of our commitment to protecting the environment, at Grupo Bimbo we found ourselves designing, manufacturing and further developing recycled plastic pallets, used in the business to transport products and store raw materials inside varying work areas.
We currently enjoy a waste-management-focused strategy, including actions we’ve undertaken adopting circular-economy models.
To create the pallets we leveraged 20% post-consumer plastic wrappers and another 80% whose recuperation is from other varieties of more durable plastic. The pallets are manufactured in partnership with the Fredher Corporation and are a successful exemplar of circular-economy based projects. They are planet-friendly, resistant and durable, recyclable and very competitively priced.
According to Bimbo Sustainability Manager in Mexico Mauricio Borges, the business has already incorporated more than 17,000 kilos in recycled plastic pallets this year, all from reclaiming post-commercial, recycled packaging.
“There’s no doubt that adopting alternative circular economic models like this one are viable and efficient as a means of minimizing plastic-trash impacts on the environment. As well, resource and waste-management take on more and more relevance when it comes to social and environmental benefits that seek sustainability,” Borges remarked.
Our recycled-plastic pallets are to be used at our Bimbo Distribution Centers in Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara, as well as in raw materials warehouses at the Lerma Barcel plant. The project was added to our numerous waste-management actions. It was only back in 2019 that we launched the first compostable bread packaging in Mexico for the Vital brand and today we can boast that all our packaging that can be biodegradable now is biodegradable thanks to D2W technologies that conform to ASTM 6954-18 standards.
We similarly continue participating in post-consumer recycling programs with Ecoce, for proper handling of discarded containers and packages in Mexico. Just last year this effort managed to collect more than 4400 metric tons of flexible films. For the second year in a row, Bimbo formed part of “Reciclamanía” where—in tandem with Walmart and Ecolana—more than 1000 kilos of discards including flexible wrappers and packages were collected and recycled.
Through actions of this sort and thanks to our teams we continue to innovate as we build a sustainable, highly productive and transparently human business.
