Food companies trying to reduce their consumption of plastic have a big problem — it’s hard to find suitable recycled material. Nestlé says it’s willing to spend more than $2 billion to try and fix that.

The world’s biggest foodcompany said in a statement Thursday that it would cut costs in other parts of its business to free up more than 1.5 billion Swiss francs ($1.6 billion) to buy 2 million metric tons of recycled plastic between now and 2025.

Nestlé said it would be paying above the market rate for the recycled material, part of its strategy to alleviate a shortage of used plastics suitable for food packaging by luring new suppliers into the business. Doing so shouldhelp the company meet its goal of reducing its use of virgin plastics by a third by 2025.

“Making recycled plastics safe for food is an enormous challenge for our industry,” Mark Schneider, chief executive of Nestlé, said in a statement.

“That is why in addition to minimizing plastics use and collecting waste, we want to close the loop and make more plastics infinitely recyclable,” he added

Source: https://ktvz.com/money/2020/01/17/nestle-is-spending-billions-to-create-a-market-for-recycled-plastics/