Hotpack says 96% of its product portfolio is now validated as environmentally friendly and recyclable.

For a packaging company selling more than 4,500 products across paper, aluminium, plastics, recycled materials and biodegradable formats, that is a striking number.

But it also raises a more useful question:

What exactly does 96% mean when one company sells packaging made from several completely different material systems?

That matters because “environmentally friendly” and “recyclable” are not technical equivalents.

A paper food container, an aluminium tray, an rPET pack and a biodegradable plastic product can each have very different:

collection systems,

recycling pathways,

carbon footprints,

food-contact requirements,

and end-of-life outcomes.

Hotpack’s new 2025 Sustainability Report, Our Impact. Our Future, therefore deserves to be read as more than another ESG milestone.

It shows both how seriously large packaging manufacturers are beginning to measure sustainability across entire portfolios—and how difficult those portfolio-level claims are becoming to interpret.

96% is impressive, but it needs a denominator

Hotpack’s current portfolio exceeds 4,500 products.

If the 96% figure applies evenly across that portfolio, it would represent more than 4,300 products classified under the company’s sustainability criteria.

But there is an interesting year-on-year comparison.

Hotpack’s previous sustainability reporting said 97% of a portfolio of more than 4,000 products was recyclable or environmentally friendly.

The new figure is 96%.

That does not necessarily mean performance deteriorated.

The portfolio itself has expanded.

Illustratively, 97% of 4,000 products is around 3,880 products, while 96% of 4,500 is around 4,320.

So the absolute number of products meeting Hotpack’s criteria could have increased even while the percentage declined.

But without a consistent year-on-year denominator and methodology, the percentage should not be treated as a simple improvement metric.

That is one reason future sustainability reports would benefit from separating:

total SKUs,

recyclable SKUs,

recycled-content products,

compostable or biodegradable products,

renewable-material products,

and products meeting more than one criterion.

A single percentage can hide very different environmental stories.

“Recyclable” also depends on where the package is sold

This is the more fundamental issue.

A package is not practically recyclable simply because its base polymer or fibre can theoretically be reprocessed.

A PET container may be recyclable in a market with:

collection,

sorting,

bale markets,

and PET reprocessing capacity.

The same package may have little chance of material recovery in another market.

Likewise, a paper package can contain coatings, laminates or food residue that influence whether a receiving mill actually wants it.

Hotpack operates in 17 countries and sells into more than 100 markets, so one portfolio-level recyclability number spans very different waste-management systems.

That does not make the metric meaningless.

It means the strongest next step would be to distinguish:

designed for recycling

from

collected and recycled at scale.

The packaging industry increasingly needs both.

rPET provides a more measurable example

Hotpack’s rPET programme is easier to evaluate because it focuses on a specific material intervention.

The company says its recycled-PET packaging can reduce carbon emissions by approximately 30–40% compared with virgin PET, based on its life-cycle assessment work.

Hotpack’s sustainability platform also says it can manufacture packaging using 100% rPET.

This is potentially significant because recycled content tackles a different problem from recyclability.

Recyclability asks:

Can this package become material for another product?

Recycled content asks:

How much secondary material has already displaced virgin resin in this package?

Circular packaging needs progress on both sides.

But even the 30–40% carbon figure should remain tied to the company’s reported LCA rather than treated as a universal rPET saving.

Results depend on:

electricity mix,

collection,

sorting,

transport,

recycling technology,

recycled-content percentage,

and the virgin-resin benchmark.

The EcoVadis result is a different kind of evidence

Hotpack’s EcoVadis Gold Medal provides an external benchmark of its sustainability management system.

The company scored 80 out of 100 and ranked in the 97th percentile.

That percentile is consistent with a Gold Medal.

EcoVadis currently awards Gold to companies in the top 5% of all companies it assessed during the previous 12 months, across industries worldwide.

But the distinction matters.

EcoVadis does not independently certify that 96% of Hotpack’s packaging is recyclable.

Its assessment covers a company’s management systems across:

environment,

labour and human rights,

ethics,

and sustainable procurement.

So there are two separate claims here:

Hotpack’s portfolio sustainability metric,

and

an independent sustainability-management rating.

They reinforce the broader ESG story but should not be treated as validation of the same thing.

Hotpack’s portfolio diversity makes the challenge unusually complicated

Many packaging companies specialize primarily in one material.

Hotpack does not.

Its portfolio includes:

paper,

aluminium,

PET,

recycled PET,

other plastics,

and biodegradable or plant-based packaging.

That gives customers a wide choice.

It also means sustainability cannot be reduced to one preferred substrate.

A lightweight plastic pack may use less material than a heavier fibre alternative.

An aluminium container may have high recycling value but significant primary-production emissions.

A fibre package may use renewable feedstock but require a coating.

A biodegradable structure may offer advantages in specific leakage scenarios but still require a defined end-of-life route.

The more technically mature approach is therefore application-specific.

Choose the package that protects the product with the least overall resource burden while fitting the recovery infrastructure of the destination market.

That is harder than labeling 96% of a catalogue “green.”

But it is ultimately more useful.

Product protection still has to remain part of sustainability

This is particularly important in food packaging, Hotpack’s core market.

A package with an excellent environmental profile can still be a poor sustainability choice if it increases:

food spoilage,

leakage,

damage,

or shelf-life losses.

Food normally carries far more embedded resources than the few grams of packaging protecting it.

That means packaging reduction has an engineering limit.

Hotpack’s H-PET development illustrates that balance.

Its earlier sustainability report described the technology as reducing package weight by as much as 30% while maintaining structural performance, using physical blowing and nucleation technology.

That type of lightweighting can be particularly valuable because it reduces virgin material before the recycling question even begins.

The strongest packaging strategies will increasingly combine:

less material,

more recycled content,

adequate product protection,

and credible end-of-life pathways.

The next sustainability report should make the 96% claim harder to misunderstand

Hotpack’s reporting is becoming more sophisticated.

It now reports through GRI-aligned structures, measures carbon emissions and has an externally benchmarked EcoVadis score.

Its 2024 carbon-footprint reporting quantified approximately 53,320 tonnes of CO2e, covering reported Scope 1, Scope 2 and selected Scope 3 emissions.

That level of measurement creates an opportunity.

Rather than relying heavily on the broad “environmentally friendly” category, future reporting could show exactly how the portfolio is changing.

For example:

What percentage contains PCR?

What percentage is mono-material?

What percentage has completed recyclability testing?

What percentage is compostable under a recognized standard?

How much virgin material has been avoided?

What percentage is actually recyclable in the principal markets where it is sold?

Those metrics would make Hotpack’s sustainability story stronger, not weaker.

The real achievement may be portfolio transformation, not the headline percentage

Hotpack has grown from a regional packaging supplier into a manufacturer with 25 production facilities, operations in 17 countries and thousands of products.

Changing a portfolio at that scale is more difficult than launching one sustainable packaging range.

Resins have to change.

Suppliers have to be qualified.

Machines may need adjustment.

Food-contact performance must be preserved.

Customers have to accept the new structures.

Costs still have to work.

That is why the 96% figure is worth watching.

But its value is not that it proves 96% of Hotpack packaging will actually be recycled.

It shows that environmental criteria are increasingly being incorporated into product development across a very large packaging catalogue.

The next stage is more demanding.

Move from classifying products as sustainable to demonstrating exactly why each one is better—and whether the recovery system actually captures that advantage.

That is where packaging sustainability reporting is heading.

And for a company serving more than 100 countries, that evidence may ultimately matter more than whether the headline number is 96% or 97%.

Last Updated on 18/09/2026 by Jota Machinery