Boulder, CO – February 2025 – The Pet Sustainability Coalition (PSC) and Hill’s Pet Nutrition announced the formation of the Pet Specialty Store-Drop-Off (SDO) Action Collaborative. This initiative brings pet industry leaders together to tackle one of the pet industry’s most significant environmental challenges: flexible plastic pet food packaging.
The group aims to provide a means to reduce plastic waste destined for landfills and a way for pet industry companies to improve their overall environmental footprint if they choose to participate in the initiative.
Flexible packaging represents a complex waste challenge for the industry. Because many pet food bags are made of multiple, fused layers of material, they are not accepted in most curbside recycling programs and the vast majority end up in landfills.This collaborative seeks to create a viable end-of-life solution for this waste stream. For participating pet retailers across the United States, this means implementing an effective store drop-off collection system where their customers can conveniently return empty pet food bags to be kept out of the landfill.
To be successful, this collection system for flexible plastic pet food bags must be verified and scalable. This work builds on PSC’s previous packaging pilots, including the “Flex Forward” program in 2020, to create a solution.
PSC is proud to announce the following companies are participating in designing this voluntary program:
- Brands: Hill’s Pet Nutrition
- Retailers: PetSmart, Petco
- Packaging Innovators: Peel Plastics, Morris Packaging
This new SDO Action Collaborative is designed to leverage collective power,” said Allison Reser, Director of Sustainability and Innovation at PSC. “The group will design the program and generate rigorous, verifiable data. This data is the key: it has the potential to demonstrate the viability of diverting flexible film packaging from landfills and the capability to be widely recyclable under emerging EPR laws.”
“Hill’s Pet Nutrition is proud to be the pioneering partner of the new SDO Action Collaborative,” said Ana Gensini, senior director of global packaging at Hill’s Pet Nutrition. “Our role as a founding member is to help provide the leadership, resources and commitment necessary to establish a scalable, verified collection system for pet food bags across the pet specialty channel.”
Core Objectives of the SDO Action Collaborative
The SDO Action Collaborative will focus on four key objectives:
- Design a Scalable SDO Program: Collaboratively develop and prepare to pilot an effective store drop-off collection system for flexible pet food packaging, designed to scale.
- Generate Verifiable Data: Collect robust, unbiased data on participation, volumes, logistics, and end-of-life pathways to meet regulatory standards. A key decision point will be ensuring the program’s environmental impacts are demonstrably more positive than other alternatives (i.e., landfill).
- Foster Strategic Industry Collaboration: Provide a neutral forum, in line with antitrust law, for brands and retailers to innovate, share best practices, and develop solutions, including collection mechanics.
An Invitation to Resource the Solution
The core membership for the SDO Action Collaborative is now set. However, the next phase—the Pilot Program Implementation—requires significant action beyond planning.
We are looking at which companies may be willing to engage operational resources across these critical areas:
- Financial Support: Brands and organizations willing to fund the operational costs, consumer education, and scaling of the pilot program.
- Retail/Physical Space: Pet specialty retailers willing to dedicate space in-store or in parking lots for collection bins.
- Reverse Logistics & Aggregation: Distributors, logistics firms, and collectors willing to manage the cost-effective pickup, transport, and aggregation of collected material.
- End Markets & Processing: Recyclers and end-market innovators willing to commit to accepting and processing the specialized flexible film material.
Interested parties willing to support the future pilot implementation are encouraged to contact Allison Reser to learn more: packaging@petsustainability.org.
About the Pet Sustainability Coalition
The Pet Sustainability Coalition is a nonprofit that advances business through profitable environmental and social business practices. Founded in 2013 by eight companies, PSC now serves more than 200 member companies across the pet industry, helping them to progress on their sustainability practices, set and strive for ambitious goals, and report on their achievements. Additionally, PSC leads retailers, distributors, manufacturers, brands, and suppliers in pursuing collaborative solutions to some of the largest industry-wide issues, such as sustainable packaging and protein sourcing. Connect with us on LinkedIn and YouTube. Learn more at www.petsustainability.org.
Contact:
Allison Reser
Director of Sustainability & Innovation
Pet Sustainability Coalition
areser@petsustainability.org