Month: April 2012

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Uncategorized

From Trees to Paper: A Tour of a Paper Mill

GreenBlue held the second-ever Forest Products Working Group meeting earlier this month at founding member Domtar’s headquarters in Fort Mill, SC. The full day meeting was extremely productive as the Working Group moves full steam ahead on its inaugural project, creating a common framework for sustainable paper products. Time was also dedicated to identifying the next project for the group to undertake.
An optional tour of Domtar’s state-of-art Marlboro integrated pulp and paper mill was offered to all Working Group members the day before the meeting. Domtar rented a van a drove six of us two hours away to Bennettsville, SC where the mill operates. The Marlboro mill is a relatively new pulp and paper mill built in 1990 and has an annual production of 338,000 tonnes of pulp and 389,000 tonnes of paper. We were fortunate to get a tour of the entire operation, from the trees being brought in and chipped to a final 35 tonne roll of paper coming off the paper machine. Our host Lewis Fix of Domtar also took us to a converting facility that takes those giant roles of paper and cuts them down into regular office paper that gets fed into your copy machine.

The most fascinating part of the entire tour, to me, was the paper machine. If you ever have an opportunity to visit a mill and actually see how pulp (a tree fiber slurry comprising of over 90% water) starts at one end and travels through a series of dries, presses, starching, and rollers over the distance of almost an entire city block, I would highly recommend it. These machines run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, putting a 140 miles (that’s right, I said miles) of paper on a roll in about two hours. The precision the paper mill operators are able to control and the thickness and basis weight is astounding.

Every pulp and paper mill around the globe has a different and unique way of making paper, from the chemical recipe used in pulping to the design of the paper machine, all to utilize available resources and create a product with unique value in the marketplace. The challenges related to environmental stewardship in the paper industry are very complex and have global implications. GreenBlue and the Forest Products Working Group recognizes the complexity of these challenges and see the value of convening with industry leaders to bring innovative and science-based solutions to the industry. I look forward to continuing to work with this group and its future members, in addition to getting to participate in any future facility and paper mill tours.

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Uncategorized

Sustainable Packaging in the Beauty World

…“In general,” says Katherine O’Dea, senior fellow with GreenBlue, a nonprofit organization that includes the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, “Packaging is the consumer interface so the easiest way to get consumers’ attention in this regard is with the words recycled content and recyclable. Recycled content speaks volumes about being green,” she says, adding that packages made of recycled materials and those that can be recycled are today’s key trends because consumers understand (or think they understand) these terms. Beauty Packaging

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Sustainable Packaging Coalition

A Day at the MRF

The SPC Spring Meeting in Toronto just wrapped up, and one of the highlights of the meeting was a tour of the Peel Integrated Waste Management Facility. The facility is the largest of its kind in Canada and houses a single stream Material Recovery Facility (MRF), a waste transfer station, in addition to an organics composting plant. Scott Ballantine, Packaging Project Manager for long-term SPC member company Microsoft, shot some great footage from the tour that captured the inner workings of the facility. Enjoy!

 
 

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Uncategorized

Sustainability in Store Brands Packaging Moves to the Forefront

The topic of sustainable packaging is making its way to the forefront of store brands executives’ minds because it can present both cost and environmental advantages. Store Brands Decisions, in collaboration with GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), presented “Sustainability for Store Brands Packaging,” a three-hour seminar that co-located with the recent Store Brands Decisions Innovation & Marketing Summit. Store Brands Decisions

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Sustainable Packaging Coalition

SPC Spring Meeting Kicks Off in Toronto

This year’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition Spring Meeting kicks off today at the Fairmont Royal York in downtown Toronto. The conference, open to all and with over 250 attendees registered to attend, is recognized as the leading educational forum on sustainable packaging. We have an exciting agenda planned for the next three days with nearly 30 leading packaging and sustainability speakers. Session topics range from reducing packaging waste, packaging’s role in corporate sustainability strategies, forest ecosystems and packaging, by-product synergy for packaging materials, and extended producer responsibility. In addition to sessions, we have exciting tours and networking events lined up for the meeting, including tours of Steam Whistle Brewery, home of Canada’s Premium Pilsner and recently named one of Toronto’s greenest buildings; and Peel Integrated Waste Management, the largest facility of its kind in Canada that houses a single stream MRF, a waste transfer station, and an organics composting plant. The meeting is generously hosted by SPC member companies BASF Corporation, Be Green Packaging, MWV (MeadWestvaco), Shanghai Luxin Packing Materials Science & Technology Co., Ltd., and TricorBraun.
Why did we choose Toronto for this year’s Spring Meeting? We always try to locate our meetings in cities that are recognized as environmental leaders, and Toronto is widely recognized as one of the greenest cities in North America, particularly given their extensive waste management and recycling efforts. Toronto is ranked the most sustainable large Canadian city in Corporate Knights magazine annual Sustainable Cities rankings. Toronto also ranks ninth in the US and Canada Green City Index and is the fourth most livable city in the world according to The Economist’s annual ranking of global cities. Toronto was also recently rated the “smartest city” in North America by Fast Company, who cite Smart Commute Toronto, a private sector collaboration working to improve public transportation, as well as the city’s initiative to use natural gas emissions captured from landfills to fuel municipal garbage trucks as major reasons Toronto scores so highly. You can check out Toronto’s Environmental Portal to learn more about the city’s ambitious environmental projects, programs, and policies.
In addition, when we search for SPC meeting locations, we always take into consideration all green initiatives that the conference hotel has implemented. Before choosing a hotel, we outline specific requirements in a “green contract” that the hotel staff must sign to ensure that our sustainable meeting needs are met. Here are some of the of the ambitious green standards that the Fairmont Royal York currently has in place:

  • The Fairmont Royal York holds a Four Green Key rating by the Hotel Association of Canada
  • 2008 Winner of Gold Level Business Award in Waste Minimization from the Recycling Council of Ontario (3rd consecutive year)
  • Recycling program that includes office paper, newspaper, colored and clear glass, aluminum, tin, plastics, cardboard, and corks
  • The hotel uses EcoLab cleaning products – Fairmont’s corporate supplier of environmentally friendly cleaning solutions
  • Water-conserving fixtures are in guest rooms, including tap aerators, low-flush toilets, and low-flow showerheads
  • In 2005, The Fairmont Royal York installed an ultra-modern commercial water softening system, reducing water usage of 476,000 litres per day
  • Low volatile organic compound (VOC) materials are used in guest rooms, such as paints, carpets, wall coverings, etc.
  • Energy-efficient lighting is used in guest rooms and meeting rooms
  • Occupancy sensors and timers are used to control lighting in guest rooms
  • Organic waste from the kitchen is composted
  • Emissions from the event will be offset through the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs or green tags)

For those of you who are joining us in Toronto, we hope you enjoy the city and the SPC Spring Meeting!

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GreenBlue

Ten Views of Sustainability: A Reading List

With my latest book, The Shape of Green, coming out this summer, a colleague asked me to compile a list of other sustainability-related books I would recommend. Since the usual suspects—Silent Spring, The Ecology of Commerce, Biomimicry, and Cradle to Cradle, etc.—are so well known, there’s no need to repeat them here. Instead, I’ll focus on a more personal list of favorites that have influenced my thinking on sustainability. Below are ten compelling reads that, in their own ways, expand the sustainability dialogue.
The Wooing of Earth, René Dubos (1980). The man who coined the phrase, “Think globally, act locally,” explains that it is not the ethics of environmentalism but, rather, the “visceral and spiritual” power of nature that moves people to action. Ecology and humanism must unite.
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, E. O. Wilson (1999). The famed father of sociobiology declares that sustainability is impossible without breaking down the barriers between the arts and sciences: “Until that fundamental divide is closed or at least reconciled in some congenial manner, the relation between man and the living world will remain problematic.”
The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, David Abram (1997). We tend to speak of “the environment” in the singular, as if it’s one homogeneous space, rather than an endless variety of peaks and plains, hills and haddocks. Abram meditates beautifully on how the values of indigenous peoples grew out of the specificity of place—how each worldview evolved from a particular view of the world.
The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson (1965). Where Silent Spring was her call to arms, The Sense of Wonder is Carson’s reverie on the joys of immersing oneself in nature. Presaging The Last Child in the Woods by forty years, she writes that such immersion is essential for early education—and for lifelong wisdom.
The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, Fritjof Capra (1997). An eloquent introduction to “deep ecology”: “The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realize that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent.”
Human Nature: A Blueprint for Managing the Earth—By People, For People, James Trefil (2005). A physicist defies conventional wisdom about the environment and celebrates new scientific breakthroughs that promise to solve the challenge of sustainability—by putting people first.
The World Without Us, Alan Weisman (2007). A powerful thought experiment in what would happen if humanity suddenly disappeared. Step by step, Weisman shows how quickly nature would fill the void, which forces us to ask what sustainability is intended to protect—all of the earth, or just us?

Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation, Steven Johnson (2010). Comparing innovation to evolution, Johnson shows how some environments—coral reefs, cities, the World Wide Web—are naturally more conducive to creativity than others are.
Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, Vandana Shiva (2006). Shiva’s insightful criticism of economic globalization demonstrates how its practices could be antithetical to sustainability.
One World: The Ethics of Globalization, Peter Singer (2004). In the age of global warming, Singer argues, managing natural resources must transcend political boundaries and nation states.

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Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Salmon Fishing, Strawberry Queens, Food Waste…and Packaging

I recently attended and spoke at the Sustainable Packaging Symposium in Houston, Texas. One of the major themes of the meeting was the topic of food waste, which makes up a hefty 14% by weight of the US municipal solid waste stream (2009 EPA estimate). Food waste is an issue where food manufacturers, grocery retailers, and restaurants, in particular, feel especially responsible and engaged. The whole meeting was great, but a few weeks later, I am still thinking about the message two speakers brought to the group about food waste.
Michael Hewitt, Director of Environmental and Sustainability Programs at grocery chain Publix, gave a keynote address that addressed the economic and social implications of post-harvest food waste. He noted that we throw away 121.6 billion pounds of post-harvest food waste in the US annually in a country where millions of people are hungry or food insecure. This translates directly into throwing our money away, as in the US households pay between $500 – $2,000 more each in annual food bills, businesses foot the bill for unsold food and waste removal, and the societal costs of poor nutrition, hunger, illness, and lost productivity continue to rise. This does not even take into account the fuel, water, fertilizers, and pesticides that go to produce wasted food.
Michael illustrated this message with a story about the Strawberry Festival in Plant City, Florida (“Strawberry Capital of the World”) near his home. The festival has everything you might imagine to celebrate the spring bounty of fruit, including all types of food, entertainment, games, and of course, a Strawberry Queen. This fun event matches the mood at the beginning of the harvest, when farmers receive a premium price for ripe (but extremely perishable) strawberries. However, as the harvest progresses, the price of strawberries drops below the cost to harvest them. The result? Tons of perfectly good strawberries left to rot in the fields. I imagine that the Strawberry Festival folks would prefer to ignore the wasted, rotting berries instead of figuring out a way to turn these berries into jam, frozen fruit, ice cream, or some other delicious product. We should definitely not be celebrating this way of doing business, where waste is ignored or casually accepted.
What role could packaging play in reducing food waste? In the UK, Marks & Spencer grocery story has debuted a new feature for its fruit packaging. It’s a small strip that absorbs ethylene gas (the gas that encourages fruit to ripen) and does not impact the package’s recyclability. With this strip, the fruit that is harvested stays fresh for several extra days and less is wasted.
Dune Lankard gave another great talk about food waste and salmon fishing. Mr. Lankard is a native Alaskan from Cordova, on the Copper River. Spurred on by the anger over the environmental impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill near his home, he turned to working with local salmon fishermen to regain control over the processing, packaging, labeling, and marketing of the now famous Copper River salmon. This has involved spreading best practices in processing; for example Dune and others discovered that if fishermen clean the fish at sea immediately upon catching them, it doubles the shelf-life of the product and also brings the fishermen higher prices. His work has touched on waste, because when fish are filleted, 50% of the fish becomes waste. The waste is traditionally dumped into the ocean near shore, where the high levels of nutrients create dead zones. Dune hopes to start a processing facility where that fish waste can be made into omega-3 capsules, fish meal, biodiesel, or compost. Finally, packaging comes into play because Copper River salmon are in such high demand that they are routinely flown to the lower 48 and around the world. The fish must be kept cold, but finding packaging that protects the fish but which is also recyclable remains a big challenge.
It is clear that packaging has an important role to play in finding solutions to food waste. Industry associations, like the Grocery Manufacturers Association & Food Marketing Institute in particular, are also working to reduce food waste and find better alternatives to landfill, such as composting. They have also invited the NRA (the National Restaurant Association, that is) to participate in this effort. I look forward to hearing about their progress at reducing levels of food waste in the future!

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GreenBlue

Interview with a Board Member: Alan Blake

In a new In the Loop blog series, we will be featuring interviews with members of the GreenBlue Board of Directors on why they work with GreenBlue and what they think is ahead for the organization. Eric DesRoberts kicks off the series with a recent interview of Alan Blake, Associate Director of Global Packaging Sustainability at Procter & Gamble, who is the newest member of the GreenBlue Board of Directors. Alan has been involved with the Sustainable Packaging Coalition for a number of years and currently represents Procter & Gamble on the SPC’s Executive Committee.
DesRoberts: As a child, what was your dream job?
Blake: Growing up, I wanted to be a Fireman.
DesRoberts: Can you talk about your journey from Fireman to your current position at Procter & Gamble?
Blake: I was fortunate to go through an education system that opened my mind to a number of possibilities. Having studied sciences, I knew I needed to do something that could be applied, and chemical engineering was an exciting route to pursue. I joined ExxonMobil Chemicals in the late 70’s – at the time, chemical engineering and the petroleum industry was a great place to be. After several years, I decided I needed to expand my horizons, which is when I came to Procter & Gamble.
I’ve been involved in packaging for 20 years. Early on, I don’t know that the word “sustainability” was part of our vocabulary, or necessarily included in our business plan, but I think there has always been a business case for doing the right thing.
DesRoberts: When and how did you first get involved with the SPC?
Blake: Procter & Gamble got involved around 2008. We had just started our packaging sustainability group and we were being proactive with developments like the Wal-Mart sustainability scorecard on the horizon.
I got involved with the SPC back in 2009. I have a lot of support for the SPC vision and find great value in the SPC’s work. Also, I found that meetings are great opportunities to discuss the possibilities and challenges facing the packaging industry. My interest in the organization eventually led to my Executive Committee candidacy at the Atlanta meeting. Aside from personal interest, this was an opportunity for Procter & Gamble to gauge what the industry was thinking in terms of how we were going to manage municipal solid waste streams. Certainly there was interest in cooperation among industry members to demonstrate that we can do the right thing on our own rather than having decisions imposed on us.
DesRoberts: How has the Coalition evolved during the time you’ve been involved?
Blake: It is a journey, so it is always fascinating to see companies joining and asking: “How do we get started on our sustainability initiatives?” This rejuvenation helps progress the sustainability dialogue within the members who have been involved since the beginning. By creating forums where different groups can openly talk about their needs, the SPC is connecting different points along the supply chain and helping to answer important questions. This is also helping to shape projects within the SPC.
DesRoberts: In addition to your involvement with the SPC, you are also a new GreenBlue Board member. Why were you interested in this position, and what would you most like to contribute to the organization?
Blake: I thought it was important for the SPC to have an invested voice at the GreenBlue level. I was actively engaged in board discussions last summer and felt that my thoughts were in line with many of the board members in terms of future opportunities and challenges in front of GreenBlue.
In the short term, I would like to gain a better understanding of the work and the role that GreenBlue is playing more broadly, and better understand its projects outside of the SPC (Forest Products, Advisory Services, and Chemicals). In the long term, I hope that I can help GreenBlue position itself for success over the next 5-10 years.
DesRoberts: This year marks GreenBlue’s 10th anniversary. What do you think the next 10 years will bring for GreenBlue?
Blake: I certainly believe that the next 2-5 years will see significant growth in its Forest Products, and Chemicals programs. I also think we will see considerable global growth in the SPC as we seem to have a really good start with the Essentials of Sustainable Packaging course now being offered in Mexico and China. This will open up the global opportunities and hopefully result in GreenBlue exploring many new potential projects; particularly in developing regions. GreenBlue will have opportunities to forge alliances throughout the world and become a benchmark case study of how to answer some of the biggest challenges we face – namely resource scarcity, managing waste for worth, and doing good.
DesRoberts: You’re planning on retiring this summer. What’s next on your horizon?
Blake: Spending time with family back in England, going to the Olympics, and then consulting work. I have been contacted by a number of interested groups already, so it looks as though I’m going to be as busy as I want to be from about September onward. As long as I am providing value, I will remain active. Otherwise, I’ll be working on my golf game.
Alan is looking forward to family travel and going home for his father’s 80th birthday. He is currently reading “Catching Fire” (book two of the Hunger Games Trilogy) and recommends it to anyone that has not read it.  
 

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Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Massachusetts Aims High at MassRecycle Conference

In late March, I had the opportunity to present at the Massachusetts Recycling Coalition 2012 Recycling & Organics Conference & Trade Show. Members of the Massachusetts Recycling Coalition (MassRecycle) include over 350 local recycling coordinators, non-profits, individuals, and businesses involved in the recycling and organics industry. I had the pleasure of meeting some of those members and presenting during a session on packaging waste with Eric Hudson, founder of Preserve Products.
One thing at the MassRecycle event was clear: this is a group of ambitious and passionate people. Ken Kimmell, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), delivered the morning’s keynote. Kimmell outlined Massachusetts’s goals to reduce organics disposal and increase anaerobic digestion and recycling. He wants his state to be the national leader in recycling, reuse, and diversion, with a goal of 2 million tons of waste annually diverted from disposal by 2020. Kimmel plans to attack this through improved permitting processes, increased infrastructure, improved collection programs, and a gradual phase-in of disposal bans.
Waste management structures and recycling economics vary significantly across the country, with no exception in the northeast. For example, landfill fees in Massachusetts hover close to $80 per ton, while fees in the southeast are closer to $30 per ton. Waste incinerators are commonplace in the north, but not elsewhere where land is cheaper and therefore landfilling is more common.
Waste management is a complex field. I continue to ask myself, as a professional focused on product sustainability, how can I best translate my knowledge to consumers who have limited time to commit to recycling, composting, and sustainability? This is one of the motivations behind the SPC’s How2Recycle Label: communicating clear and consistent information to consumers to make it easier for them to recycle. Consumers often do not realize that they have incorrect assumptions about recycling, making the task that much more difficult, and important.

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Uncategorized

Study: More Than 70% of Americans Can Recycle Plastic Bags and Wraps Locally

…To help increase awareness among consumers, the FFRG is working with the Sustainable Packaging Coalition to develop a “Store Drop-off” label specifically for flexible plastic packaging. Plastics Today