NORTHFIELD, IL — A few years ago, Kraft Foods decided to lose a lot of weight. And today, it's starting the new year 150 million pounds (116 million kilograms) leaner - having eliminated enough material from its supply chain since 2005 to exceed the company's packaging reduction goal two years ahead of schedule.

"Our global team of employees is doing a phenomenal job creating opportunities to reduce packaging material while assuring convenience and safety," said Jean Spence, Executive Vice President, Research, Development & Quality. "We've invented a tool to help us design more efficiently. And we're finding smarter source materials, reducing our footprint and thinking differently about packaging end of life. We're sharing ideas, challenging and motivating one another, so this is truly a collaborative team effort."

Following are examples from Kraft Foods operations around the globe:

Shedding Weight with More Efficient Design
The greatest opportunity to influence the environmental impact based on a package's size is early in the design phase. That's why Kraft Foods developed the Packaging Eco-Calculator - a tool that helps packaging developers create efficient and optimized packaging.

In the U.S., the Oscar Mayer Deli Creations packaging was redesigned with 30 per cent less paperboard which is expected to keep 1.2 million pounds (more than 500,000 kilograms) of packaging out of landfills per year.

In Europe, the removal of packaging layers for Milka chocolate bars resulted in 60 per cent less weight and an elimination of 5.7 million pounds (2,600 metric tons) of packaging material per year. Kraft Foods is now spreading the design to markets in Latin America.

In Australia, Kraft Salad Dressing bottles were redesigned to eliminate more than 100,000 pounds (45,000 kilograms) of plastic per year. The patented design differentiates the Kraft brand from competitors and allows more bottles to ship per truckload, effectively taking trucks off the road.

Changing Behavior with Innovative Partnerships
In 2008, to help increase recycling rates in the U.S., Kraft Foods began partnering with RecycleBank, a company that rewards consumers for recycling. The more recycling a consumer does, the more reward points they have to redeem — and the less waste that goes to landfill.

In 2008, Kraft Foods also started partnering with TerraCycle, a company that "upcycles" material that otherwise would go to a landfill. TerraCycle reuses packaging to make new, useful products. Today, Kraft Foods is the largest sponsor of TerraCycle "brigades" — collection points — with more than 30,000 Kraft Foods-sponsored locations, and nearly seven million people signed up to collect waste across the United States at these locations. The program has been so successful it has expanded from the U.S. to the United Kingdom and Canada.

For more details on the company's sustainability focus and progress, visit www.kraftfoodsbetterworld.com.

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