Month: July 2015

Categories
GreenBlue

Introducing our new Project Associate, Rosemary!

Rosemary Han, SPC Project Associate

Tell us about your background
I’m from Richmond, Virginia but originally grew up in New York, where I have childhood memories of helping my mom sort plastic and glass recyclables at our local grocery store’s reverse vending machines. I think that’s where my love affair with recycling began. In 2012, I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia, where I had the opportunity to work closely with the recycling department as a student employee. During my time there, I learned about pressing sustainability issues and implemented change through student-led and grant-funded projects focused on recycling and zero-waste initiatives. This experience, paired with my summertime job as a crew member for Clean Vibes, a recycling and waste management service provider for outdoor music festivals, cemented my desire to pursue a career in environmental sustainability. Prior to joining GreenBlue in July 2015, I worked for an environmental consulting firm supporting U.S. EPA and the Superfund Redevelopment program.
Why were you interested in working with GreenBlue?
I had known about GreenBlue for several years and always admired the company’s work. My prior experiences with recycling and composting exposed me to the end-of-life handling of materials, and I became curious to fully grasp the lifecycle of those materials from beginning to end. I learned about GreenBlue’s approach with closed loop systems and valued its research on sustainable packaging. Though there are many inherent complexities to environmental sustainability, GreenBlue proves to be a leader in tackling the issues, sparking dialogue among industry, and creating beneficial tools and resources. Beyond the subject matter of its  work, I also appreciate the company’s enthusiasm to investigate new approaches and implement innovative ideas.
What are you most looking forward to working on at GreenBlue?
I’m looking forward to engaging with a diverse array of stakeholders through the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC). More specifically, I’m excited to work with various members of the SPC in assessing industry trends and corporate sustainability goals. I’m also looking forward to challenging myself to learn new things within GreenBlue’s wide breadth of work and having opportunities to learn from my fellow GreenBlue colleagues who have subject matter expertise in niche topics.
Fun facts about yourself?
I am a volunteer on-air host for WTJU, the local non-commercial radio station here in Charlottesville. It’s a great way to share my passion for music and connect with the local community!
I’m fluent in French and have studied abroad in a few francophone countries, including France, Senegal, and Morocco.

Categories
GreenBlue Sustainability Tools Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Why Aren’t More Forests Certified?

Protecting and managing forests, and all the essential services forests provide, is critical to the well-being of our planet and its inhabitants. Forests provide clean air and water, wildlife habitat, and a home to an enormous and vast array of biodiveristy. Forest also provide recreational value, resources we depend on every day, and support economies all over the world. Forests are so much a part of our everyday lives they are often taken for granted. How can we protect forests when we depend on them for so much?
Active forest management, and particularly sustainable forest management (SFM), are strategies to help strike a balance in the relationship between society’s needs and maintaining forest health. Forest certification programs, first introduced in the 1990s, are one tool that have been established to assure stakeholders SFM practices are being followed. The Programme of the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) gives a good definition: “Sustainable Forest Management certification provides forest owners and managers with independent recognition of their responsible management practices … certification provides forest owners and managers — families, communities, and companies — with access to the global marketplace for certified products.”
Today only about 12% of the world’s forests are certified to third-party systems such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). This is despite the fact that many companies request certified wood for their products. Demand in many industry sectors — solid wood, paper, and packaging — is much greater than the supply of certified wood. It begs the question: Why aren’t more forests certified?
This was the fundamental question that SPC’s Forest Products Working Group (FPWG), a collaboration of 20+ companies across the supply chain, spent the last year and half trying to answer. Working across the forest products value chain, from landowners to brand owners, the the FPWG companies found that there are a number of reasons why forest certification has not been more widely adopted, with a specific focus on the United States.
Through a series of interviews, workshops, and research, the group has found that the underlying issue is that forest certification needs to offer a more compelling value proposition to small private landowners in the United States. Likewise, forest certification also needs to offer a more compelling value proposition to brand owners. Over the course of the next few months, the FPWG will be sharing their findings from this project, including the process the group used during the project called the Value Innovation Process, or VIP. An approach that was integral to developing our findings because we asked, first: “What is the job that forest certification is hired to do?” Or in other words, getting a better understanding of “what is the value of forest certification” before looking at ways to fix certification as is.

Using the VIP, the FPWG sought to understand why many landowners and forest managers have opted not to seek certification. At the other end of the value chain, we also explored the dynamics driving leading brands and other corporations to focus on buying certified products. We also reached consensus that there are many uncertified forests that are currently practicing sound, sustainable forest management. Against this backdrop, the group is seeking to find additional strategies to enhance the value of certification.
The FPWG interviewed numerous members of the value chain including landowners, foresters, loggers, merchants, printers, manufacturers, brand owners, associations, consultants, and more. The FPWG hosted two in-person Summits where we brought value chain members and representatives from FSC, SFI, and ATFS to discuss strategies to better drive the value of forest certification. The findings were numerous. Often complex. And in the spirit of innovation, not surprisingly, findings varied enormously. In the next few months the FPWG will be discussing sharing in more detail what we heard across the value chain.
In the context of the VIP, we continue to seek answers to complex questions such as:

  • How might we gain assurance of Sustainable Forest Management when certification is not an option?
  • How might we focus on value chain members who can have the most impact on driving the value of forest certification?
  • How might  we address feedback that certification is overly complex, expensive, and does not deliver optimal desired value?
  • How might we stimulate better dialogue across value chain from landowners to brand owners?
  • How might we overcome perceptions that landowners are not practicing sustainable forest management?
  • How might we educate multiple stakeholders about forestry and forest ownership?
  • How might we create a better value proposition for small private landowners and brand owners?
  • How might we create market incentives, policies or other mechanisms that will fundamentally help keep forests as forests?
  • How might we explore innovative strategies to go beyond certification?
  • How might we gain a better understanding of supply and demand?

In the spirit of innovation, we welcome input from multiple stakeholders as we continue to tackle these complex issues.  Stay tuned for more findings and notices of upcoming events.

Categories
GreenBlue Recover More Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Conversation about current challenges in the recycling industry

I’m not usually a talk radio person, but a talk radio show has very much caught my attention recently. Last week, The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio explored New Challenges to Recycling in the United States. The guests engaged in a conceptual yet pragmatic discussion about how previous policy decisions in recycling are now starting to cause problems, and how different communities could approach these issues going forward. The conversation included some interesting details about the connection between the price of commodities and recycling, such as how the price of oil impacts whether companies choose to manufacture products out of recycled materials.
Another part of the discussion explored how a recent increase in size of curbside recycling bins has resulted in a greater volume of materials being sent to recycling facilities. Unfortunately, an unintended consequence of that increased volume has been an increase in what waste management professionals deem “aspirational recycling,” or consumers indiscriminately throwing miscellaneous materials into their recycling bin, in hopes everything will somehow get recycled.
The problem with that kind of sorting behavior, according to the guests of the show, is that some of those items can cause interruptions and mechanical snags in the recycling process. An example provided was a rubber hose: if its presence wasn’t detected on conveyor belts shortly after reaching the recycling facility, it likely would later become entangled in one of the machines, requiring a temporary shutdown of recycling operations.
The show also looked into how consumers feel and behave around these issues. One call-in listener provided unique anecdotes about her pleasant experience in Sweden, where she sorted her recyclables into sixteen different bins.
As a new Project Associate for GreenBlue working primarily on the How2Recycle program, this show particularly interested me as someone who is eager to interpret the most recent and controversial issues in recycling. These often confusing topics can be difficult for even a well-intentioned recycler and environmentalist like myself to wrap my head around. For example, why do American localities have such vastly different recycling and composting systems?
Consider the following example: I recently relocated to Virginia from Oregon. As a resident of Portland, I had curbside composting in addition to recycling (with glass in a separate bin; or, I could return glass to the grocery store to receive a deposit refund). But as a resident of Albemarle County in the greater Charlottesville, Virginia area, I now don’t have access to a curbside recycling program, even though my not-too-distant neighbors closer to downtown Charlottesville do have curbside recycling—and the instructions for sorting there are different than in Portland.
It’s mind-boggling how different communities seem to recycle in such conflicting ways; the guests of Diane Rehm skillfully explain how and why. What’s fascinating is that those differences between communities, in turn, uncover a great deal about the complexities of culture and economics in the United States. The podcast is not only a solid listen for recycling professionals who want to hear about the contours of current tensions within the industry, but also anyone who is broadly curious about the future of recycling.

Categories
GreenBlue Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Introducing our new Project Associate, Kelly!

Kelly Cramer, Project Associate Sustainable Packaging Coalition
Tell us about your background.

I identify as a first generation Southerner; my parents are originally from the Upper Midwest, but I grew up in Franklin, Tennessee. I spent the last five years in Portland, Oregon, where I studied environmental law at Lewis & Clark Law School. Some of my formative experiences include exploring the Smoky Mountains during college, a summer in San Diego spent eating bean burritos and staring at the ocean, and having the fortunate opportunity to spend some brief but meaningful time in Latin America. I’ve been an environmentalist probably ever since a Keep America Beautiful commercial made me cry when I was 5.
Why were you interested in working with GreenBlue?
I was initially drawn to GreenBlue for its pioneering spirit; because GreenBlue is so oriented toward the future and innovation, it means the organization has unlimited potential for growth. Closely related to innovation is GreenBlue’s emphasis on collaboration. What’s compelling about collaboration is that GreenBlue is able to accomplish a tremendous amount for sustainability very quickly — sometimes simply by listening and facilitating conversations in a dynamic, objective way.
Coming from a legal background, I understand how trying to better the environment in an adversarial context comes with its own set of challenges: litigation and policy reform can take a lot of time and money, and involved parties usually have to resolve conflict in a relatively traditional way. Working with that sort of constant intensity and within such defined boundaries can often be impactful, but GreenBlue occupies a unique space outside that framework. It’s a space I find to be incredibly rare and powerful.
What are you most looking forward to working on at GreenBlue?
On a practical level, I’m excited about encouraging more and more companies to join the How2Recycle program, and see the label designs I help implement on products I use myself. Conceptually, I’m enthralled by the potential to help guide the future of sustainable materials management, and design strategies to support a circular economy for next generation environmentalists.
Fun facts about yourself?
I live on a farm and am pursuing friendships with six daring and elusive peacocks; my favorite writer and poet is Jim Harrison; I’m fascinated by pop culture, celebrity and television.