Nestlé Japan is making KitKat packaging recyclable, and ideal for origami

Nestlé is on a mission to do its bit for the planet, having committed to using 100% recyclable and reusable packaging by 2025. Its latest step forward involves a huge part of its business: Nestlé Japan’s KitKat packaging. Famously available in a variety of flavours and sold by the bucketload to tourists and chocoholics alike, the brand is now switching some of its packaging from plastic to paper and expecting to save 380 tonnes of plastic every year as a result.

The new packaging will only affect its big bags of miniature KitKat bars, but it’s a start. As part of its campaign around the roll-out, Nestlé Japan is encouraging purchasers to use the paper for their origami creations, depicting a folded paper crane on the front of packets. The company says it hopes to expand the paper packaging to other products soon.

Last month, Nestlé introduced a recyclable paper wrapper for its Yes! snack bar, becoming the first brand to do so in a market that has historically only used plastic film wrappers. The technology was developed in the UK at Nestlé’s confectionery research and development centre in York and has been launched in 13 countries so far.

Yesterday it emerged that McDonald’s – which recently underwent a global brand identity redesign by Turner Duckworth – had introduced paper straws that cannot actually be recycled. Having stopped using plastic straws, which could be recycled, in favour of paper ones in all its UK branches, the company announced yesterday that these should be put in the general waste as their thickness makes it difficult for them to be processed by recycling facilities.