Month: February 2018

Categories
Sustainability Tools

January 2018 Composting Collaborative Meeting

The Composting Collaborative gathered on January 21st at the US Composting Council’s annual conference in Atlanta. More than 70 members, including many first-time participants, congregated for a jam-packed afternoon of flashtalks, a thought-provoking discussion on organics measurement, and a workshop on design thinking applied to composting from the Food Well Alliance.

Traversing more than 8 topics, the flashtalks dove into a diversity of issues. To kick off the meeting, Brenda Platt from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance shared an analysis of the importance of home and community-scale composting in the broader organics recycling context. As a small-scale bike-powered hauler based in Athens, GA, Kristen Baskin of Let Us Compost provided a more personal experience of many of the tenets that Platt discussed and shared how Let Us Compost has experimented with loss leaders and creative pricing for commercial clients.
Pivoting towards topics relating to compostable packaging, Camilo Ferro of Renew Packaging discussed a host of challenges that compostable packaging face nationwide. Namely, Ferro highlighted the reality that as “bag bans” have been passed in cities and counties across the country, compostable film bags are often unintentionally subject to restrictions or fees intended for conventional plastic film bags. Lynn Dyer with the Foodservice Packaging Institutecontinued the dialogue on compostable packaging in her flashtalk, sharing high-level results of their recent study that examined the current state of composting infrastructure capable of diverting both food scraps and compostable packaging.
Ending flashtalks on the note of the critical role that measurement and data play, Nora Goldstein, BioCycle editor and Composting Collaborative founding partner, led the group through the most impactful findings discovered in BioCycle’s State of Organics Recycling in the U.S. Report, funded in part by a grant from the U.S. EPA to the Composting Collaborative. Beyond the interesting and valuable findings concerning the number of composting facilities, the size of active facilities, and the materials that they are processing, learnings from the data collection process were perhaps most revealing.
Unfortunately, over the course of multiple large-scale efforts by BioCycle to collect organics recycling data, it has become apparent that the ability for states to collect and synthesize organics recycling information is decreasing, despite the fact that residential organics collection programs and quantity of households with access to organics recycling are on the rise nationwide.
In brainstorming the metrics most important to different stakeholders in the composting supply chain, the Composting Collaborative laid groundwork for much of the organics measurement work slated for 2018, including facilitating discussions among state-level professionals responsible for reporting to better understand gaps, standardize definitions, and determine where data collection breaks down. This conversation will continue at the February 27-March 1 Measurement Matters Summit in Chattanooga, Tennessee and onward into spring and summer 2018 in Collaborative forums.
After exploring the influence of thoughtfully structured organics measurement, the Food Well Alliance’s presentation and workshop about applying design thinking to composting systems was a natural transition. Also based in Atlanta, the Food Well Alliance’s Will Sellers and Britni Burkhardsmeier walked meeting attendees through their unique process of using learning tables, working tables, and design tables that aim to facilitate collaboration between stakeholders and accelerate the process of precise interventions for a resilient food system.
In particular, Sellers and Burkhardsmeier shared the twists and turns throughout the evolution of the design and implementation of a composting pilot that intends to collect food scraps from multi-family buildings, diverting them to decentralized community-scale composting in the immediate local area. Keeping equity, resilience, and healthy food in the front of mind, this pilot is in an early stage of implementation and promises to be a fascinating and scalable case study.

In turn, the the Food Well Alliance’s intuitive inclusion of composting in a larger discussion about fresh food sparked a meaningful discussion about whether this strategy of nesting food waste composting within the broader context surrounding closed loop food systems could be effective on a large scale. With a majority of attendees in consensus that capitalizing on the momentum evident in sustainable food today, reframing food waste composting as one portion of this cycle, rather than a solid waste management strategy, could provide a more accessible engagement strategy to individuals, commercial entities, and governments widely.

Categories
Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Addressing the Sustainable Development Goals through Packaging: SDG 12, Sustainable Production & Consumption

Historically, we have  associated resource consumption with the well being of a society. Prosperous economies and societies have needed to use more resources to continue growing. This link however has led to the development of wasteful practices in the global production and consumption of goods and services, with little regard for optimizing the use of materials or finite natural resources.
This poses a problem for society and the planet, as is evident in the rising importance of global environmental problems like marine plastic pollution, deforestation, and climate change. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #12, Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, challenges us to rethink linear make-take-waste models and provides an important call to action for business and consumers.
Should the global population reach 9.6 billion by 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets will be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles. Population growth and a rapidly rising middle class in large economies like India and China demand that we future-proof our production systems to sufficiently allocate resources to meet growing demands in a way that does not continue to undermine the ecological systems on which we depend. There is need for improvement across all of our resource management systems.
Packaging plays an important role in society to protect products and reduce waste. For example, each year, an estimated one third of all food produced ends up rotting in the bins of consumers and retailers, or spoiling due to poor transportation and harvesting practices, a problem that packaging (and smart portioning) can help to prevent.

On the other hand, packaging represents a one-time use item that is quickly discarded upon reaching the consumer. While recycling rates for some packaging materials, like corrugated cardboard are high, recycling for many other materials remains unacceptably low – with a 26% recycling rate for other paper and paperboard packaging paper and 15% for plastic packaging in the U.S. China’s import ban on U.S. recyclables presents further risks that have the potential to erode the recycling system.
The energy used to create packaging is wasted when the package is sent to the landfill rather than recycled into a new package or another product, contributing to high embodied greenhouse gas emissions. Marine debris represents a new era of crisis in the pollution of our oceans, with studies citing plastic packaging as a top contributor. Governments are responding with new regulations requiring recycled content or banning certain materials all together.
SDG 12 provides a list of measurable targets to guide action by companies and governments by 2030. For example:

  • Halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses;
  • Achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment;
  • Substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse;
  • Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle;
  • Ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature;
  • Support developing countries to strengthen their scientific and technological capacity to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production

These targets suggest some specific actions for business, and many companies have already started to conduct these activities and align their corporate sustainability goals. Evian, Coca Cola, Amcor and McDonald’s have just recently made ambitious public commitments to recyclability, recycled, and renewable content in packaging. Unilever has committed to projects to improve recycling in developing counties in an effort to combat ocean waste. Overall, attention is growing to the widespread use of hazardous chemicals in grease- and moisture-resistive barriers in packaging, and the growing number of companies with CSR reports demonstrate how sustainability reporting is becoming mainstream.
Indeed, packaging improvements and innovations offer significant power to contribute to achieving SDG 12 and its specific targets. Many of the solutions require new innovations in material design, recycling technologies and infrastructure, linking SDG 12 closely to SDG 9, “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.” Business plays a major role for meeting these two SDGs in particular.

Engaging companies on SDG 12 at SPC Impact 2018

This year at SPC Impact, we will discuss many aspects of SDG 12 and how companies can implement them.
Sustainable packaging starts with design and materials sourcing, and extends through transport and use phases by the consumer to the recycling of packaging materials that are then directed into end markets that close the material loop. The SPC Impact session: Knowledge Cafe: Sustainable Forest Products Sourcing will cover sustainable sourcing for forest products with McDonalds, Mars, Weyerhauser, Iggesund Paperboard, and Sappi. In Squaring the Circle: Balancing Source Reduction and Recyclability in a New Reusable Packaging Platform, Cleanyst will discuss their mission to reduce packaging waste and the carbon footprint in the design phase and use of home and body care products. The Least Sustainable Option with ISTA, will explore how to strike a balance between product protection and sustainability in the transport of products to consumers.
Thinking about material health impacts during the packaging use phase, Chemicals in Motion led by GreenBluewith speakers from Expera Specialty Solutions, San Francisco Department of the Environment, University of Notre Dame and Coop Denmark will discuss chemicals and health Implications in Food Packaging. At a package’s end of life, Evolving Flexible and Multi-material Packaging will discuss how we can resolve tradeoffs between food waste prevention or end-of-life on multi-materials in packaging with Printpack, Amcor, NOVA Chemicals, The Dow Chemical Company, and Recycle BC. Sessions are also dedicated to closing the loop in recycled material markets. In Creating End Markets for Recycled Materials, Klöckner Pentaplast defines the challenges and opportunities in end markets that will help enable use of recycled content for use in new products.
From responsible sourcing to source reduction to recyclability to recycled content, these conversations help to decouple economic growth from resource use, as businesses explore how they can boost their bottom line with improvements in material efficiency and a sustainable value proposition to customers.
It is in businesses’ interest to understand these issues and to find solutions that enable sustainable consumption and production patterns that ensure the security of their operations as well as their continued social license to operate.

Categories
Eliminate Toxicity

Communicating Safer Alternatives Through the Supply Chain

The market for products formulated with safer chemistries is growing significantly.
There are many challenges for companies who want to develop safer alternatives. The first step is to successfully find safer substitutes for the chemicals of concern a manufacturer seeks to replace. Then there is performance testing to make sure that the finished product is as efficacious as its predecessor. Then, finally, a manufacturer has to find effective methods to market its improved products to existing and prospective customers.  Within the household and institutional cleaning products sector, CleanGredients is one way ingredient suppliers can communicate third-party verification that their ingredients are safer for human health and the environment, but some companies take it a step further and highlight their CleanGredients listings in marketing and educational materials.  These suppliers take on the role of educating their customer base about their innovations, and help product formulators find the resources they need to formulate safer products that their customers want.

Some suppliers that list in CleanGredients have made an effort to help their customers navigate EPA’s Safer Choice certification program.  For example, late last year, Stepan Company released  a product and formulation guide entitled “Navigating Safer Choice”, which makes it easy for customers who may not be familiar with CleanGredients and Safer Choice to understand which of Stepan’s home care ingredients are environmentally preferable options that meet Safer Choice criteria.  The guide identifies how each of Stepan’s CleanGredients-listed products can be used in product formulations, as well as which of their products meet other green chemistry criteria, such as bio-based content.  It also highlights Stepan’s starter formulations, which are formulations that can be used as-is for a variety of cleaning applications, or can be customized with a formulator’s colorant or fragrance, making it easy, especially for small formulators, to get a product with the Safer Choice certification to market.  Stepan has supplemented their latest guide by supporting the Safer Choice program in other ways, such as participating in webinars designed to educate other stakeholders about the program.  Their commitment to the Safer Choice program was acknowledged by EPA when they were recognized as a Safer Choice Partner of the Year in 2015 and 2017.
Other companies are also trying to educate their customers about ingredient options meeting the Safer Choice criteria  – both for ingredients used in product categories eligible for the Safer Choice certification as well as for  ingredients that meet  Safer Choice master criteria and are considered to be  safer alternatives to other options on the market.   BASF Corporation uses the Safer Choice Standard and CleanGredients as two tools in its toolkit to clearly communicate which of its ingredients are safer alternatives and to help its customers make informed decisions.  Within its Home Care and I&I Cleaning business unit, BASF’s CleanGredients Product Guide for Safer Choice Formulations identifies groups of ingredients meeting the Safer Choice standard and listed in CleanGredients, along with relevant applications in home care products and suggested formulations, making it easier for customers to formulate products that can achieve the Safer Choice certification.  But BASF has also chosen to join Eastman Chemical in listing a non-ortho-phthalate plasticizer, Palatinol® DOTP, in CleanGredients.  While this ingredient is not yet used in product categories eligible for the Safer Choice certification, because it is listed in CleanGredients, BASF can reassure its customers that it meets the Safer Choice Master Criteria and is a safer option for human health and the environment.
More and more chemical suppliers are recognizing that they have a key role to play in educating their customers and helping them select lower-hazard ingredients that will be used in end products that are safer for human health and the environment.  Listing an ingredient that meets the Safer Choice criteria in the CleanGredients database provides important third-party assurance that it is a safer alternative, but suppliers have the opportunity to go further, leveraging their CleanGredients listings to help their customers understand their options and to ultimately create safer, more effective products their customers  want.