As a new company following a 2024 merger, Smurfit Westrock (SW) recently established unified, measurable sustainability targets, in its first integrated sustainability report.
The previous report had tracked separate legacy goals for Dublin-based Smurfit Kappa and North American WestRock. New company-wide targets for 2030 are:
- Reduce Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 28%
- Cut water intake at mills by 22%
- Reduce landfilled mill waste by 24%
Most of SW’s mill waste is rejected material from the pulping and screening process, according to the report. In 2025, its mills sent 1.5 million metric tons of waste to landfill, versus 1.7 million metric tons routed to recycling — pointing to room for improvement on the company’s new landfill-reduction target.
Notably absent: Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi)-approved goals, which are still in progress — one area where the company’s post-merger sustainability picture remains unclear, and is an outlier among its peers. International Paper (IP), Graphic Packaging (GPI) and Packaging Corp. of America (PCA) each cite SBTi-approved targets.
An evolving recycled-content profile
The two legacy companies had very different recycled-content profiles, which is why about 55% of primary raw materials for the combined company now come from recycled fiber, according to the report. SW mills consumed roughly 13.1 million tons of recovered paper fiber globally in 2025, sourced from 70 recovered fiber depots.
Chris Davidson, vice president of sustainability engagement at SW, expanded on key elements of the combined strategy during an interview with Resource Recycling.
Like competitors, and in contrast to plastic packaging, “We don’t have targets for recycled content in our products,” he said.
The limitations of recycled fiber – which gets shorter each time it’s recycled – require regular infusions of virgin wood to retain strength, though heavier corrugated grades can handle higher levels of recycled content than lighter consumer grades, he said.
As such, SW instead takes a grade-by-grade, performance-based approach to determine the level of recycled content.
In comparison, IP reported an average of 35% recycled content in its North American packaging products for 2025, and 77% for recent acquisition DS Smith in EMEA markets. Like SW, IP merged with another company, but announced in January it would break off into two regional companies. IP also plans to review its sustainability strategy in light of the split.
That tension between maximizing recycled content and maintaining usable fiber strength is a key issue across the sector, not just at SW. And recent surges in feedstock and logistics costs have informed the strategy for competitor PCA.
During the Wells Fargo Industrials and Materials Conference earlier this month, PCA CEO Mark Kowlzan said his company has shifted feedstock usage toward virgin material to help offset elevated OCC and transportation costs. This is despite PCA’s acquisition of Greif a year ago, which increased the company’s recycled-content capacity and brought PCA closer in line with competitors.
PCA’s stated philosophy remains a deliberate mix of virgin and recycled content — “fiber flexibility,” Kowlzan said — rather than maximizing recycled content. “Even though we have gone up in recycled content with the Greif acquisition, we still have the best positioned mill system in terms of integrated capability with wood converted to pulp in our mill,” he said. “And now is a good example of how we’re taking advantage of the integrated virgin kraft, so it’s paying dividends for us.”
Regulatory tailwinds
US regulatory pressure on packaging waste is also driving innovation in paper substitutes, including expanding mill acceptance of coated paper cups as feedstock.
Davidson said SW customer requests for compliant packaging vary widely — including new coating formulations for cold-chain and frozen food packaging — and pointed to Costco’s effort to replace plastic handles with paper-based alternatives on multi-packs of jars and bottles.
SW is proactive in tracking regulatory developments, Davidson said, both for internal operating policy and to inform client conversations. “Our customers sometimes aren’t as up to speed on what is coming down the pike in terms of a potential regulation affecting the packaging that we’re using today,” he said.
That gap may encourage customers to shift toward less-plastic, more-paper packaging, or to push for new formats designed to meet incoming rules. So that regulatory uncertainty itself is helping shape product innovation as much as any internal sustainability target.
While SW isn’t alone in framing plastic substitution as a sustainability pillar, its competitors take different angles.
GPI and IP similarly tout plastic-displacement metrics and addressable-market sizing. At the recent Wells Fargo conference, new GPI CEO Robbert Rietbroek said, “All the secular trends are in our favor,” pointing to the elimination of most single-use plastics from European grocery by 2030 and a $15 billion addressable market for converting rigid plastic and foam to paper.
GPI’s new recycled paperboard mill in Waco, Texas, has excess capacity it’s working to fill. About 70% of GPI’s products use recycled material, he said, and the mid-90s percentage range is recyclable.
Cascades, by contrast, frames its fiber strategy around self-circularity — emphasizing the recyclability of its own packaging rather than plastic displacement. In its recent sustainability report, Cascades said it was aiming for all of its packaging to be recyclable, compostable or reusable, with a 2025 baseline of 87.9%.
