Hershey Annual General Meeting
I’m Kelly McBee with As You Sow moving Item 5, a shareholder proposal regarding a circular economy for packaging.
This proposal asks our Company to evaluate extending our responsibility for our packaging beyond the point of sale and through to the packaging’s end-of-life. Some opportunities to achieve this could include using less plastic, exploring reusable and package-free alternatives, and making sure that the disposable packaging we do use is always collected and recycled.
Many governments around the world are passing legislation to do just this and are holding companies financially responsible for ensuring that packaging stays in the economy and out of landfills and oceans, a concept known as extended producer responsibility, or EPR.
In just the last few years new EPR for packaging laws have passed in four U.S. States – Maine, Oregon, Colorado, and California – with many more being introduced. The regulations in these states are expected to effectively tax producer companies on a sliding scale of packaging sustainability and use the funds to build and expand waste collection infrastructure. If governments continue this growing policy trend, companies that use packaging could face a collective annual financial risk of approximately $100 billion.
Our Company has a notable goal for 100% of our plastic packaging to be recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2030, but has failed to take sufficient action to meet it. Hershey’s must move beyond making packaging that is recyclable by design and explore new actions to ensure that our packaging actually gets recycled, a mission that dozens of our competitors currently act on through voluntarily financial donations to expand and modernize recycling infrastructure. Our Company is not known to independently contribute to recycling systems nor to engage with EPR legislation to level the corporate playing field on recycling responsibility.
Hershey’s appears unprepared to meet the risks created by new EPR legislation and the forthcoming Global Plastics Treaty, which is expected to dramatically change the way companies use and dispose of plastic packaging.
Our Company would benefit from the report requested in this proposal, which could explore new opportunities to act on our responsibility for plastic packaging at its end-of-life.
Please vote YES on this proposal to support the evaluation of new circular packaging actions at our Company. Thank you.