National Packaging Covenant

The National Packaging Covenant (NPC) has been the leading instrument for managing the environmental impacts of consumer packaging in Australia since 1999. It’s a voluntary arrangement based on the principles of shared responsibility through product stewardship in the packaging supply chain.

The NPC is designed to minimise the environmental impacts caused by the disposal of used packaging. It also aims to encourage companies to conserve resources through better design and production processes and facilitate the reuse and recycling of used packaging materials.

The NPC establishes a framework for the effective life cycle management of consumer packaging and paper products. It is designed to encourage a collaborative approach between all sectors of the packaging supply chain, consumers, collectors, reprocessors and government.

Following our ratification of the NPC, we developed a three year Action Plan (2007-2010), for which we scored 3.7 out of 5. Our 2007/2008 Annual Report outlined our progress in minimising packaging and waste across our business operations, for which we scored 4.6 out of 5.

During the last year we have made significant progress in numerous areas across the business, including:

• Reducing the weight of our SIM packaging by over 70%;
• Enhancing our Code of Ethical Purchasing and working with our tier one suppliers to move their average corporate responsibility score from ‘good’ to ‘excellent’;
• Increasing handset recycling by 54% through MobileMuster;
• Reusing and recycling more than 93% of our network waste; and
• Decreasing the amount of office paper purchased.

Read Vodafone Australia’s 2007/2008 NPC Annual Report

For more information about the National Packaging Covenant visit www.packagingcovenant.org.au.