News

European cycle industry launches sustainable packaging commitment

April 1, 2022

70+ companies, including many Bicycle Association members, have already pledged to reduce plastic packaging waste in the supply chain:

European cycle trade bodies Cycling Industries Europe (CIE) and the Confederation of the European Bicycle Industry (CONEBI) have launched an industry-wide commitment to reduce plastic packaging and eliminate unnecessary packaging from the supply chain. The pledge has been signed by ca 70 founding companies, and a number of trade associations including the BA, and others are invited to follow suit.

Full details are below, or watch our video briefing:

The Cycling Industry Sustainable Packaging Commitment

Our commitment:

  1. Sharing and endorsing the common vision for more circular and sustainable packaging solutions with your supply chain partners
  2. Working with supply chain partners to reduce problematic plastic packaging and eliminate unnecessary packaging within your supply chain by 2025
  3. Working with supply chain partners to ensure that all supply chain packaging is reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025
  4. Working with supply chain partners to increase recycled content within packaging materials by 2025
  5. Creating customer / retail facing packaging commitments, which align with or exceed the common vision by 2025
  6. Sharing progress and update with the wider cycling industry through the CONEBI / CIE Sustainability working group forum

Kevin Mayne, CEO of CIE, said:

Cycling is at the core of the mobility transition, making sure Europe is cleaner, greener and more liveable. The way our industry operates has to meet the same high ambitions, so we need to be at the forefront of a sustainable industrial sector. CIE and CONEBI have set an ambitious agenda to tackle important industry-wide challenges and to initiate pioneering initiatives and actions across the supply chain, this packaging initiative is the first of many ways we will act to reduce our environmental impact.

Manuel Marsilio, General Manager of CONEBI, said:

Our Industry Sustainability Programme puts the concept of cooperation within the industry at the centre of a wide strategy that is both in line and reinforces the European Green Deal. What we see today is that a growing number of companies are ready to take their CSR actions to ambitious heights, proactively engage in the ongoing Green transition and Circular Economy, shaping them with a forward-looking mindset.

While customer and retail facing packaging provide companies the creative opportunity to design packaging solutions, which reflect their own values and sustainability ambitions, this only accounts for a proportion of our industry-wide packaging waste. Our complex, global and often shared supply chains also create significant amounts of packaging which can be often overlooked.

Cycling industries are uniting behind a shared vision of creating a circular economy for packaging, contributing to the European Commission’s goal for a new circular economy. This vision covers all packaging material. For plastic specifically, it is inspired by and closely aligned with the vision of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s ‘New Plastics Economy Initiative’, also adopted in the ‘Global Commitment’ led by the Foundation in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme. This vision is also endorsed by US based People For Bikes.