In 2022, iFood will be, for the first time, the official delivery of Rock in Rio Brazil, the biggest music festival in the world, held in Rio de Janeiro between the 2nd and 11th of September. And anyone recharging their batteries in the event's food area, Gourmet Square, will come across another new feature: the food will be housed in Packaging of the Future, made with recyclable paper.
The new packaging, 100% national and plastic free, was developed in partnership with Suzano, which is Rock in Rio's official sustainability partner, especially for the festival. The paper is made from virgin fibers from renewable eucalyptus forests and coated with a biodegradable water-based resin.
This is another of the initiatives of the iFood Regenerates, iFood's environmental goals program, which seeks to eliminate plastic pollution in delivery operations and neutralize carbon emissions by 2025. More than 230 thousand of these sustainable packaging will be used at Rock in Rio — and their useful life will not end in trash can.
Aligned with the principles of circular economy, iFood and Suzano will ensure that all packaging collected after use is sent for recycling to be reused as raw material for new products.
“Rock in Rio is the ideal stage to encourage, with different audiences, the importance of circularity, reducing the use of plastic and increasingly conscious consumption”, comments André Borges, head iFood's sustainability plan.
And, according to André, it can be a starting point for adopting Packaging of the Future also when delivering orders made on the app. “We are allocating 61 thousand units to some restaurants that will be at the festival. The intention is for the project to gain support from partner restaurants to expand the use of sustainable packaging in delivery”, says André.
Less plastic in delivery
The new packaging was born from the desire to offer alternatives to plastic that were, at the same time, sustainable and viable for large-scale use in food delivery. In 2021, iFood and Suzano launched the Future Packaging Challenge, whose proposal was to create a plastic-free paper packaging for PF (or Prato Feito).
In the iFood app, customers can now reduce their consumption of plastic, eliminating the need to send items made with the material, such as cutlery, straws and single-use cups. In partnership with the 160 thousand restaurants that are part of the Friends of Nature program, more than 200 million orders have already been shipped without these plastics."Furthermore, we invest in recycling projects to achieve our commitment to eliminate plastic pollution from our operations in 2025”, adds André.
The action at Rock in Rio also reinforces Suzano's commitment to offering, by 2030, 10 million tons of products from renewable sources, developed from eucalyptus biomass, to replace plastics and other petroleum derivatives.
“Suzano is at Rock in Rio to provoke consumers to reflect on the importance of their choices and reinforce each person’s role in building a sustainable future”, says Fabio Almeida, executive director of Suzano’s Paper and Packaging Unit.
To encourage the correct disposal of paper packaging, Suzano will install six collection machines in Cidade do Rock, all with screens touch screen indicating step by step how to discard and win exclusive gifts.
