A major user of packaging materials, we want to make sure we responsibly manage the effects our packaging has on the environment at every point – from the design stage right through to the ultimate disposal of the materials.

In Australia, we have been a signatory to the National Packaging Covenant since 2001. A co-regulatory agreement between industry and government, the Covenant aims to improve packaging recycling and recovery systems in Australia. It provides us with the opportunity to further progress and improve initiatives such as reducing packaging materials, light weighting, design optimisation, reducing waste, recycling, increasing recycled content in packaging materials, measuring performance and reducing the impact of our packaging in the marketplace.

As a signatory under the Covenant Mark 1, we reviewed all of our packaging related practices looking for areas of improvement. The result was a three-year action plan which we completed in 2005 which reduced the packaging related environmental impact of all of our beer, wine and spirit operations.

When the first Covenant expired in July 2005, we strongly supported the development and planned implementation of an enhanced, second National Packaging Covenant which will continue for a further five years through to 2010. We signed the new Mark II Covenant in September 2005 and have developed two new action plans to further manage and improve the impacts of our beer, wine and spirits packaging.

Across the Tasman we signed up to the 2004 New Zealand Packaging Accord, a five-year programme to improve the sustainability of packaging used in New Zealand. Along with two hundred other companies who signed the Accord, Lion has undertaken to save resources when it designs, makes and selects packaging and optimize recovery and reuse of materials. So far, Lion has made significant progress and is on track to achieve the targets of the Accord by 2009.

The results of our involvement in the Packaging Covenant and the Accord can be viewed under Packaging Case Studies.