Packaging allows us to bring our water to you, our consumer, preserving the natural spring water’s quality–but we believe it shouldn’t come at the expense of the environment. After all, our water couldn’t exist without a healthy environment.
Mainstream bottling systems are still primarily linear—raw materials are used to make packaging, and after the product is consumed, the packaging is thrown away, adding new waste to the environment. Simply put: this model isn’t sustainable.
How will we do it? The way we always do and will continue to do: with a proactive, pioneering approach and a real, actionable plan. From overhauling our product lifecycle with new, innovative partners, to actively engaging the community, our sustainability initiatives will put us on track to reach our 2025 goal.
Because we’re committed to protecting and nourishing the health of our planet and its people, we are playing our part to accelerate the transition from a linear to a circular economy of sustainable packaging. Simply put, this means eliminating packaging we don’t need and innovating packaging where possible to ensure it can be recycled and safely reused again and again so it remains part of the circular economy and never becomes waste or pollution. In January 2018, we pledged to become a circular brand and transform our packaging to make all our plastic bottles* from 100% recycled PET by 2025. As of May 2024, 100% of new evian bottles* manufactured for sale in the US are made from 100% recycled PET.
*excludes label and cap
The challenge
Plastic packaging presents environmental risks, and plastic pollution affects our planet’s water, air, soil, plants, animals, and climate system.
While recycling is part of the solution, recycling alone isn’t enough to overcome these challenges, and not all items that can be recycled actually are recycled. According to EPA data from 2018, approximately 29.1% of PET bottles & jars were recycled across the United States. The EPA also noted that plastic can end up in landfills, waterways, and oceans.
We need your help to meet our goals. We urge our customers who have access to recycling systems to use them. The EPA has created a website to educate consumers on How Do I Recycle Common Recyclables | US EPA. The EPA confirms that plastic bottles and caps can be recycled and that “typically the caps and labels can be left on the bottles as well.” Nevertheless, we understand also that not all consumers have such access and that some communities do not have the capacity to properly handle all recyclable waste produced in their community. To improve the likelihood that recyclable materials get recycled, companies, governments, consumers, and other stakeholders will need to work together to advocate for and strengthen recycling systems and take action to manage products responsibly. Danone is actively working to expand the availability of evian in non-plastic bottles to provide consumers with non-plastic options.
In a linear economy, packaging is formed from raw material, used once, then discarded as landfill waste. At evian, we're encouraging others to move away from this approach.
In a reuse economy, packaging is formed from raw material, is recycled and reused, then discarded as landfill waste. At evian we are continually finding ways to use more recycled content.
In a circular economy, once raw material is formed as packaging, it is recycled and reused continuously to remove it from the waste stream. At evian, our journey to get there starts with our pledge to make all our plastic bottles* from 100% recycled PET by 2025.
*excludes cap and label
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle recycling has allowed our plastic bottles to be recyclable since its introduction in 1992, but we refuse to stop there. As of May 2024, 100% of new evian bottles* manufactured for sale in the US are made from recycled plastic (rPET).
*excludes label and cap
These efforts have been achieved with the help of breakthrough technology companies like Loop Industries. They’re pioneers in their own right and have developed a technology that enables large scale plastic bottle recycling, transforming all types of PET plastic waste into the high-quality our recycled bottles require.
As you can see, working together has provided shared value; thus, we’re on track to meet our sustainability goals and circular ambitions.
For more information on Loop Industries click here.
It’s not just our bottles we’re hoping to keep out of the Earth’s environment, it’s other plastic waste too. That’s why in 2018-2019 we got on board with The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch non-profit start-up that uses its technology to rid the oceans of plastic.
Together through our parent company Danone and sister brand, Aqua, we joined this project in 2018 as a research partner in Indonesia to analyze waste captured by The Interceptor™, an exciting new technology that aims to stop plastic waste from entering oceans by intercepting it at rivers. The Interceptor™, which is 100% solar powered and uses the natural forces of the current, aims to extract up to 50,000 kgs (just over 110,000 lbs) of plastic waste a day from the 1,000 most polluted rivers around the world. But what happens to the collected waste, you ask? We have helped analyze and categorize the collected debris to gain a better understanding of the challenges that caused it to enter rivers in the first place, so we can prevent it from ending up there going forward.
We’re trying our best, but we can’t do it all alone. That’s where community comes in. We’re working with governments, recycling industry partners, and consumers all over the world to increase the collection and recycling rates of plastic bottles. For example, we’ve invested over $5 million in the Closed Loop Fund, which develops large-scale recycling infrastructure in the United States, and we’re always creating new ways to challenge everyone around the world to get involved in creating a circular economy through recycling. The more we work together to recycle, the closer we get to achieving our vision of producing bottles made from 100% recycled plastic.*
*excludes label and cap
Incorporated an average of 25% rPET into
our everyday plastic bottle range and
removed plastic wrap surrounding bottles
with launch of our No Wrap Pack multipack
Launched first refillable
bottle with Soma and our first
1.5L bottle with 50% rPET
Launched Limited Edition
‘Activate Movement’ collection
and sustainability grant
with Virgil Abloh
Aim to be a circular brand using 100%
rPET across our entire plastic* portfolio
*excludes cap and label
Seeking to reduce plastic bottle waste
Accelerating recycling initiatives
