Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) has published its 2021 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report, which includes the company’s plans for advancing its sustainability agenda.
 
The company continues to strive to meet its customers’ expectations for responsibly sourced products that contribute to a healthy planet and community wellbeing. For example, WBA committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030 compared with 2019.
 
Packaging is also a large part of WBA’s sustainability agenda.

Addressing Packaging Waste

WBA has made significant progress in the past two years on surveying suppliers for its brands to establish baseline data to report packaging material weight and to be able to measure reduction in the future.
 
No company can tackle the plastics issue on its own, so WBA collaborates with a number of organizations seeking industry-wide solutions. On packaging issues, it works with groups including the Sustainable Packaging Coalition and Retail Industry Leaders Association.
 
WBA has established public goals around plastic packaging for its owned brands, with its UK-based brands working toward 2025 targets and the U.S.-based brands working toward the same targets for 2030. These targets include:
 

• Reducing plastic packaging by 30%
• Making 100% of plastic packaging reusable or recyclable by consumers
• Using 30% PCR across all plastic packaging
• Eliminating all problematic or unnecessary single-use packaging

Accomplishments in 2021

One significant packaging sustainability project in fiscal 2021 was the relaunch of No7 cosmetics packaging (e.g. lipsticks, compacts, foundation, mascara and more) with less plastic by weight, more post-consumer recycled content and higher recyclability.
 
During fiscal 2020, WBA started working with key packaging suppliers to make the following innovative changes, which will be in market fiscal 2022:
 

• Steel weights were removed from products, eliminating 23 metric tons of steel per year. Savings were re-invested in PCR plastic.
• Compacts and lipstick cases that had zero PCR plastic, now contain 25 to 30 percent PCR.
• Recyclability claims for No7 product packaging are carefully vetted against multiple criteria, including ability to collect, sort, clean, reprocess and having an end market for the recycled material.

 
Furthermore, plastic was almost entirely removed from secondary packaging for Boots UK 2020 owned brand holiday gifts. For these gift items, plastic used in secondary packaging for the 2020 holiday season was 1.36 metric tons, down from more than 400 metric tons the previous season, and the percent of plastic in packaging for all products was well under a tenth of a percent, compared with 15 percent previously. In addition, all material used in secondary packaging for the 2020 holiday season was recyclable.