Children celebrate recycling plastic

Making Our Packaging More Sustainable

At Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health, our mission is total health – for individuals at every stage of life, for communities around the world, and for our planet. We understand how important it is for people to have healthy places they can call home in order to live their healthiest lives possible.

That is why we're making good on our promise to help people achieve their health goals while also protecting our environment:

  • We’re tackling preventable diseases through education and partnerships, starting with smoking cessation and preventable skin cancers.
  • We're improving product transparency, beginning with ingredients, so our customers have the information they need when choosing health products for their families.
  • We have been working hard to increase the use of recycled plastic and paper in our packaging. We’re introducing reusable packaging and refill models across our Leadership Brands. And we’re going beyond packaging – addressing the materials footprint of our in-store display and promotional materials.

We understand how important it is for people to have healthy places they can call home in order to live their healthiest lives possible.

Our promise to reduce plastic usage

Last year we announced that by 2030, we will invest $800 million to make a meaningful impact on the health of people and the planet. As part of the world’s largest healthcare company, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health is uniquely positioned to approach the health of people and planet in an integrated way. That’s why we’re working hard to improve the sustainability of our product packaging.

  • We are reducing plastic waste by removing unnecessary packaging and designing packaging that is recyclable or reusable.
  • We have been working hard to increase the use of recycled plastic and paper in our packaging.
  • We are investing in partnerships and cross-industry collaborations to realize our sustainability objectives.

Working toward our mission

JJCH Plastic Packaging Transformation

By choosing our iconic brands, people are using products that not only help them achieve their personal health goals but help them care for the health of the planet as well. Here are some of the ways our brands are reducing plastic waste, increasing use of recycled plastic and paper, and making our packaging easier to reuse or recycle:

Improved recyclability

  • Johnson's® has eliminated pumps from many products, diverting 30 million impossible-to-recycle pumps from landfills every year.
  • By 2022, NICORETTE® will use only carton-board certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as coming from responsibly managed forests that provide environmental, social and economic benefits.
  • LISTERINE® is taking important first steps to use more recycled plastics in our bottles – launching new mouthwash bottles in 2021 made with 50% recycled plastic in the UK and 30% in Brazil. We aspire to use only bottles made from 100% recycled plastic by 2030, which will save significant amounts of plastic waste from going into landfills around the world.
  • OGX® Purifying + Charcoal DetoxTM shampoo and conditioner bottles were changed from unrecyclable black plastic to recyclable clear plastic, which has eliminated more than 75,000 kilograms of unrecyclable plastic in North America since 2018.
  • Similarly, in Europe, LE PETIT MARSEILLES® removed the carbon black plastic from its men's product packaging – improving recyclability at scale and in practice.

Move to reuse models

Material reduction

  • In Latin America, o.b. ® SempreLivre eliminated 22 million inserts by printing information on the inside of the carton, saving 45 tons of paper every year.
  • OGX® is developing solid shampoo bars, which will further reduce the need for plastic packaging.

Because ‘total health’ includes a healthy planet, we will continue to reduce packaging waste and use more recyclable, recycled, and renewable materials across our brands. We’ve empowered our 19,000+ employees to rethink how we do business and we’re encouraging experimentation and embedding game-changing behaviors in everything we do. While we’re proud of the progress we’ve made and innovative solutions we’ve introduced to reduce the use of plastics in our products, we know there is still a huge opportunity to continue to make changes that will have a positive impact on the planet.