Our customers don’t just love our products — they love our packaging, too! If you’re an Annie’s fan, you’ve seen the fun games, Bernie’s “push tail to open” and tuggable ears. We are working hard to ensure the planet loves our packaging, too, by minimizing our packaging footprint.This past year, our goal was to complete a comprehensive baseline assessment of our primary and secondary packaging systems.

This means we inventoried the majority of the products that we sell and the materials used to package them—including the product that the consumer ultimately takes home as well as the packaging used to move the product from the manufacturer to the retailer.

To do this, we analyzed the weight of our packaging materials, and through this analysis, we estimate that more than 90% of our packaging material weight comes from just two sources: paper and glass. Both of these materials are recyclable.

Of the remaining materials, some of them are recyclable (steel cans and plastic bottle caps) and some are not (product wrappers). As we continue to look for more sustainable options for the smaller percentage of our packaging that is not recyclable, we plan to keep our efforts focused on where we can make the most difference by ensuring we’re using the most sustainable paper and glass possible.

That’s why we target 100% recycled content with a minimum of 35% post-consumer content when sourcing our cardboard cartons. Our glass salad dressing bottles are 100% recyclable and made with a minimum of 35% post-consumer recycled glass. In addition to our attention to the packaging raw materials, many of our carton suppliers use vegetable-based inks for printing.