Month: September 2012

Categories
Sustainable Packaging Coalition

A Common Vision for Sustainability Keeps SPC Members Passionate About the Future

A few weeks ago, nearly 200 Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) members came together for the annual 2012 SPC Fall Members Meeting. While the Fall Meeting has always been a chance for members to roll up their sleeves and shape SPC project work, this year’s meeting in Pittsburgh also gave members a chance to step back and think about the bigger picture: the future direction of the SPC.
When the SPC was formed in 2004, we had nine members and the sustainability landscape was a wide open frontier. Now in 2012, we have 200 members and counting, but the sustainable packaging landscape is also much more crowded. It was time for our members to look back at our origins in order to move forward. We began as a small group of committed companies who gave their time, effort, and funding to create a space where members could collaborate and learn from each other about leading edge sustainability practices both in packaging and also across the rest of their businesses.
Today, we are a large group of companies, but one thing I have learned over the past four years is that companies who choose membership in the SPC are nothing if not passionate about collaborating on sustainability! That characteristic has remained a key feature distinguishing SPC members from the industry at large–a claim that is confirmed year after year by the results of our annual survey of the packaging industry conducted with Packaging Digest magazine.
At this year’s Fall Meeting, member companies presented case studies demonstrating how their membership in the SPC has helped them collaborate and actually spread sustainable packaging practices up and down their supply chains and deeper within their own companies. They heard the latest about SPC-led projects, shaped by members and designed to benefit the whole industry, such as:

  • The How2Recycle label now appearing on packaging on store shelves
  • Plans to integrate SPC’s COMPASS life cycle packaging design software with Esko’s design software
  • Creation of a Voluntary Packaging Design Guide with Éco-Enterprises Québec coordinated through PAC Next
  • SPC Member-Led Working Groups starting to tackle issues such as small package recycling (think lip balms and travel sizes) and the sustainability of inks, adhesives, and coatings that are applied to packaging.

This type of project work, from the germ of a theory all the way to concrete changes in packaging available on store shelves, happens nowhere else but the SPC. This desire for real, meaningful change is truly unique to this passionate group of companies.
So, eight years later, our members continue to be leading edge companies eager to hear the latest advances and unbiased information about sustainable packaging. They don’t shy away from difficult issues and instead get down to work and ask, “Where do we start?” As positive influencers with a common vision who want to spur broad change in the marketplace, SPC members tell us that the SPC is their go-to place to share and solve problems. I speak for the entire SPC staff when I thank our members for all of their hard work over the years and say that I look forward to starting to work together on the next eight years of sustainability in packaging. And we’ll see you all in San Francisco for our 2013 SPC Spring Meeting!

Categories
Recover More Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Bad Packaging Designs Perpetuate Negative Costs to Our Communities

This article by GreenBlue Senior Manager Minal Mistry appeared in this month’s issue of Packaging Digest, which features a monthly column by GreenBlue staff on packaging sustainability. Read the original article.

As I was sitting at a local coffee shop on a nice summer afternoon, I overheard a conversation about “all the waste in society” at another table. What stuck with me was a comment that waste was “merely an externality” of the modern on-the-go lifestyle. The notion occupied me on the walk back to the office as it relates to my work with the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, particularly to the optimization of packaging design and life-cycle analysis. From a design perspective, where does good design end and where do externalities begin?

In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit that is not fully captured in the price of a good or service and is incurred by a party who was neither the buyer nor the seller. An externality can also be viewed as an unforeseen or unintended consequence accompanying a process or activity. Of course, there are positive and negative externalities that hold true for packaging.

Often, a design captures the specified parameters for cost, performance and aesthetics, yet these parameters may not be sufficient to minimize the negative externalities associated with packaging. Improving the positives while diminishing the negatives is the art of design optimization.

For packaging, externalities exist in terms of litter, municipal solid waste (MSW) collection and processing costs, pollution and habitat destruction resulting from material sourcing as we examine the entire life cycle of the material flow. However, are these truly externalities associated with the modern world? The definition of externalities draws attention to unforeseen or unintended consequences, and that is where the nexus of optimization occurs. However, all of these impacts associated with the life cycle of a package or product are already known within the industrial supply network. So, setting aside the price discussion, the question becomes: Are these truly unforeseen or unintended outcomes?

In the U.S., the latest MSW data suggest that 38 percent of aluminum, 31 percent of glass and 14 percent of plastic packaging is recovered. Knowing these statistics going into the design optimization process, can we truly attribute the remaining discarded portions that end up in landfills as an externality? One can argue the systemic inefficiency of material flow cannot be viewed as an externality. However, it does represent significant economic, environmental and social burdens that are externalized to members of the wider community. The significance of a negative externality may change over time, yet the principle that bad design perpetuates significant negative external costs seems sound. Some of these costs are a result of market failures, while others can be attributed to the misalignment of design and other areas such as end-of-life material reclamation.

Within the packaging community, several efforts are attempting to address these issues and some are involving the social sector through direct citizen participation or policy mechanisms. The solution to bridging the gap between the packaging materials placed in the market and the subsequent recovery of those materials at a systems level resides in the engagement of all the relevant actors and in the art of optimization. Design optimization has a role in capturing the systemic needs upfront. All the while, industry and society must work together to improve the overall system. At its core, this is the spirit of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. The challenge is to come together with this spirit to honestly tackle tough issues, like externalities, and come to solutions that serve the best interests of the whole.

Categories
Sustainable Packaging Coalition

SPC Fall Members Meeting Kicks Off in Pittsburgh


This year’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition Fall Members Meeting kicks off today at the Sheraton Station Square Hotel in Pittsburgh. We are expecting to have over 180 packaging and sustainability professionals in attendance, and we have a very exciting agenda planned for the next two days. The meeting begins today with two exciting tour options: Greenstar Recycling Center, a municipal and commercial single stream processor in the Pittsburgh area, and AgRecycle Industrial Composting Facility, the largest industrial composter in Pennsylvania.
At this week’s meeting, we celebrate eight years of groundbreaking collective work as the SPC, and we are looking to our members to shape the future of the organization. As we continue to work together to advance sustainable packaging, we look forward to a robust discussion on the future of the SPC as we focus on strategic planning for the next five years. Woven throughout the sessions, our meeting’s theme is “Success Through Supply Chain Collaboration.” Look for this theme in sessions that showcase SPC members working together and along their supply chains, as well as the SPC partnering with other organizations. This theme also includes our SPC Member-Led Working Groups, who will be providing updates on each group’s progress. You can find the complete agenda and session descriptions on the meeting website.
As in previous years, we are co-locating our meeting with the Sustainable Packaging Forum, which will be held September 11-13. This year’s Fall Meeting is generously hosted by SPC member companies Dow Chemical Company, PepsiCo, and Solo Cup Company, and we are very grateful for their support and leadership. For those members who are joining us in Pittsburgh, we hope you enjoy the city and the SPC Fall Meeting!

Categories
GreenBlue

Top Five Fun Facts: September (Back to School Edition)

Eric DesRoberts continues his monthly series of facts and tidbits he’s uncovered during his research to better understand products and packaging. You can also check out his past Fun Facts here.
1. Back to school sales are the second highest consumer spending period for retailers behind the winter holidays. The average family with children in grades K-12 reportedly spends nearly $700 on back to school items. When adding the K-12 sales to college spending, the total sales are expected to reach over $80 billion.
2. In the US, roughly 480,000 school buses bring students to and from school every day. Cumulatively, these drivers log about 5.8 billion miles each year and save communities an estimated $7.7 billion that would have been realized if these students rode to school in private vehicles. 

3. The cost of a four-year education has more than doubled (real values) from 1980 to 2010. The average price of a 4-year education in the US is just over $32,000.
4. On average, school systems spend just over $11,000 on each of the 50 million students enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools. In the upcoming school year, this is anticipated to hit around $570 billion in total.
5. In 2011, about 32 million students participated in the National School Lunch Program at a total cost of nearly $11.1 billion.

Categories
GreenBlue

Surfing is Valuable: The Perfect Wave as an Ecosystem Service

The numerous services we receive from nature don’t typically come with a price tag that’s easy to see. Unfortunately, without that price tag, our economic system makes it difficult to appreciate these ecosystem services or take them into account when a competing business opportunity comes up.
Wetlands and mangrove forests provide us with (free!) flood control and nurseries for fish and crabs. Vegetation near streams provides (free!) nutrient filtration for our waterways. Forests and soils sequester carbon from the atmosphere (for free!) when we burn fossil fuels. Honeybees pollinate many of our food crops (for free!). But how can we value that flood control, those fish, tons of carbon sequestered, or crops pollinated? If we had to step in and provide these “free” services in lieu of nature, it’s obvious that we wouldn’t continue to consider these services “free.”
Tourism and recreation dollars are an incredibly valuable benefit for local communities that practice land and water preservation. For example, around the world, protected nesting beaches for sea turtles have drawn thousands of tourists who want to catch a glimpse of this amazing animal–along with millions of their dollars for local communities. Figuring out nature’s price tags is an increasingly effective way for scientists, economists, and conservationists to work with communities and convince them to forgo short-term economic gains in favor of a more lucrative long-term plan that preserves nature in the bargain.
We’re familiar with tradable permits designed to reduce air pollution, and markets around the world have started putting a price on carbon emissions. The latest in the effort to put a price tag on nature? Surfonomics. This article in the Washington Post explains how we have now started to put a price tag on a perfect wave, this time in Puerto Rico. You can find out more about Surfonomics from the Save the Waves Coalition.