Kraft Foods has launched an initiative to eliminate 100 million pounds of packaging material from its products worldwide by 2015. This commitment was the driver behind delivering the Yes Pack, Kraft's new sustainable flexible pouch for salad dressings to the foodservice industry.

The Yes Pack is a stand-up pouch with dual handles, and a rigid screw cap closure that replaces the traditional rigid plastic container for salad dressings. The company stated the product is more compact than rigid jugs, and flattens when empty, which can provide easier disposal and lower waste-removal costs.

A Kraft Foods spokesperson told PlasticsToday the Yes Pack is a flexible nylon-polyethylene blend film made in house, and it is produced with about 60% less plastic when compared to the rigid gallon container.

"We have eliminated 70% of the inbound transportation required to produce our salad dressing containers by no longer having trucks deliver empty bottles to Kraft," the company stated. "Now, we manufacture Yes Pack at the same location as where our dressing is produced."

When it comes to recyclability, the original rigid bottle is actually easier to recycle, as the Yes Pack may not be accepted for recycling in all areas.  Kraft stated while the original rigid bottle is more accepted by recycling programs the recycling rate was low.

"Yes Pack customers benefit from reduced total waste, energy, and carbon impact over our original product - even when average recycling is credited to the old package but not the Yes Pack," the company stated.

Kraft partnered with PE International, a sustainability consulting company, to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment, which quantified the environmental benefits of the Yes Pack. The Life Cycle Assessment is a standardized method of evaluating environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of a product from raw material production, manufacturing and use, all the way through disposal.

"After extensive data collection from our suppliers, technical modeling, and a rigorous third-party critical review of the study, we confirmed without a doubt that our new packaging design was not only better for our customers - in terms of yield and ease - but also in terms of environmental sustainability," the company stated.

As of now, the Yes Pack is designed only for Kraft's foodservice salad dressing portfolio.