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BIC Transforms its Approach to Plastic Products & Packaging

New sustainability goals around its use of plastic drive BIC to look at new options for products and packaging, including a greater use of recycled materials, a move from plastic to paperboard, and refillable and reusable alternatives.

The new BIC ReVolution line is the brand’s first full range of eco-friendly stationery items, including ball pens, mechanical pencils, permanent markers, and correction tape.
The new BIC ReVolution line is the brand’s first full range of eco-friendly stationery items, including ball pens, mechanical pencils, permanent markers, and correction tape.

Founded in 1944, Clichy, France-based stationery, lighter, and shaving products company BIC has built its business around bringing everyday essentials—most of them made from plastic—to consumers around the world. Now, in an era where products and packaging made from plastic are in consumers’ and legislators’ crosshairs, BIC is taking its circular economy journey, begun in 2003, to the next level by transforming its approach to plastic.

This transformation is being guided by ambitious commitments made by the company as part of its “Writing the Future, Together” 2025 Sustainable Development Program, first announced in 2018. By 2030, BIC aims to have 50% of its products made from non-virgin petroleum plastic, with an intermediate goal of 20% by 2025. In the area of packaging, it has pledged that by 2025, 100% of its consumer plastic packaging will be reusable, recyclable, or compostable.

Furthermore, BIC has committed that by 2025, 100% of its paper and carboard packaging will be provided by certified sources and/or will be recycled, 100% of its plastic packaging will be PVC-free, and 75% of the material used in its plastic packaging will be recycled. According to the company, plastic represents 21% of its carbon footprint. By reaching these commitments, BIC estimates it could reduce its emissions by 10% by 2030.


Watch video   Watch this video from BIC on its vision and mission.

Said BIC CEO Gonzalve Bich at the time of the announcement of these goals, “BIC has been at the forefront of sustainability for more than 15 years; it is a core element of everything we do, from how we operate to the products and solutions we bring to consumers. We know shoppers are increasingly looking for more sustainable options, and that is what we will continue to deliver. It’s our 4R philosophy: reducing the amount of raw materials used to make our products, including as much recycled or alternative materials as possible, making more refillable products, and improving the recyclability of our products and packaging.”

Driven by a proprietary science- and data-driven design tool and scorecard that is integrated into its product development process and will soon be used for its packaging as well, BIC is making impressive progress toward its goals. At year-end 2020, the company reported that it had transitioned to 49.3% reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic in its consumer packaging, was using 48.9% recycled content in its plastic packaging, 94.4% of its packaging was PVC-free, and 97.3% of its cardboard packaging was coming from a certified and/or recycled source.

BIC uses ‘just what’s necessary’

BIC’s environmental journey began in 2003, when it launched its Sustainable Development Program, with the first report on the program published in 2004. According to the company, Sustainable Development is about generating economic growth while respecting people and nature. In BIC’s 2020 Universal Registration Document, it explains, “This exhaustive program encompasses all key sustainability issues as well as the related risks to which BIC, in order to fulfill its corporate responsibility, must respond.”

But it could be argued that BIC has always been about a reduced footprint. In 1950, co-founder Marcel Bich invented the company’s flagship BIC Cristal pen, the symbol of Bich’s philosophy of “just what’s necessary” and now the world’s best-selling disposable ballpoint pen.

Affirming this minimalist philosophy, BIC Director of Product Lifecycle Management Thomas Choulet says, “One of our founding principles is to offer fairly priced products made with as few materials as possible, and that includes packaging.”

To this end, he explains, in 1994, BIC began conducting LCAs of its products. The first was undertaken to compare a non-refillable shaver with a refillable one, the results of which indicated remarkably similar impacts. In 2004, with the launch of its Sustainable Development Program, BIC extended that work and commissioned a “normalized” LCA along with several simplified LCAs for three category-leading products.


Read article   Read how BIC addressed COVID-19 by producing PPE with plastic packaging materials.


“More recently, we’ve developed a tool called the Environmentally & Socially Measurable Advantage scorecard [EMA],” Choulet says. “In 2020 the digital development of the EMA was completed, and the scorecard was integrated into the product development processes. An extension of the EMA tool for evaluating BIC products is underway for packaging. This tool makes it possible to evaluate new packaging in order to optimize it and reduce its environmental footprint and will be used by packaging development teams in their everyday decision-making process.”

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