Author: user

Categories
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!

 
 

Categories
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

Categories
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!

Categories
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.

Categories
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!

Categories
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.  
 

Categories
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.

Categories
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

Categories
Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Kids' Science Challenge – Down to the Wire!

Some of you may have been following the SPC’s involvement with this year’s Kids’ Science Challenge, a nationwide competition for third to sixth graders to participate in hands-on learning about science and engineering. This year’s challenge included three topics to choose from: 1) Animal Smarts: come up with an activity for captive animals to utilize their wild instincts; 2) Meals on Mars: invent a creative way to produce, cook, deliver, or grow food on Mars; and 3) Zero Waste: develop a packaging idea that does not end up in the landfill.
The Kids’ Science Challenge received 1,436 entries across all three challenges combined, with 395 for the Zero Waste Challenge. All these entries had to be evaluated and that task fell on a group of preliminary judges including educators and other folks from Cyberchase (the PBS educational television series for children age 6-12 that teaches children discrete mathematics), Mythbusters, and the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California. These good folks did the hard work of reducing the nearly 400 entries in the Zero Waste Challenge down to a manageable set of semifinalists for the group of packaging judges, which I am a part of. Our input will be combined to determine the finalist(s), and this year’s winners will be announced in early May. The students with the winning entries will get to visit a team of scientists and engineers for a day to make their experiment or prototype come to life.
In the meantime, I’d like to share the following insights taken out of context from the project descriptions submitted by the kids purely to show a common story that reveals some big topics we all grapple with. Enjoy!

  • “One of the biggest problems these days is there is too much trash!”
  • “We get our paper [newspaper] in a bag every day, so it made me think of where that plastic goes after we get done with it.”
  • “The Earth needs to be able to have no pollution on it. Plants and animals have been getting sicker and sicker because of pollution and it’s terrible! That is the main reason why I made this idea.”
  • “It is really important to reduce the waste to keep our earth cleaner and healthier for ourselves and for generations to come.”
  • “We came up with the idea by brainstorming and writing our ideas on a piece of paper.”
  • “We were brainstorming when we laid [our] eyes on one of our classmate’s beautiful lunch bags and POOF, the vision came to our minds.”
  • “I decided on the topic Zero Waste, because I love nature and I love trees. I hope my idea could protect nature and save the trees.”
  • “I realized that nature had come up with a perfect package [oranges and bananas].” So why even make it [packaging]?

Here are some new made up materials and terminology from the kids for all the marketing and branding folks out there:

  • Phytoplastic: plastic that could be made from post harvest wheat and corn straw
  • Biopotastic: plastic that could be made from potato processing waste
  • Biococoplastic: plastic that could be made from coconut husks
  • Weg: Super strong material that could be made from spider silk. Of course WEG also stands for Webs Ending Garbage because the material will be composted or recycled.

In the end, one kid’s phrase stuck in my noodle and I leave you with it. “All I’m trying to say is the product I thought of is a really good product.” Be sure to stay tuned for the announcement of the winners on May 2nd!

Categories
Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Market Price of Recycled Material Just Doesn't Match Its True Value

This article by GreenBlue Program Director Anne Johnson 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 a brief review of Economics 101, a free market is one where prices are determined by supply and demand. In the past several years, we have seen a steady rise in the price of many commodities, most notably oil, metals and the products that are in turn impacted by these price increases.

Aluminum also has seen price increases. Worth between $0.70/lb and $1.00/lb, aluminum cans are one of the most valuable packaging materials used. So why did we throw away 1.3 billion pounds of aluminum last year? This is equivalent to the aluminum in more than 27,000 Airbus A320s, according to Alcoa. (PSI EPR Dialogue, Jan. 19, 2010)

Using an average value of $0.85 for baled used beverage containers, this represents more than $1 billion thrown in U.S. landfills annually. So why aren’t we recycling more of them? Isn’t that what a free market would suggest should happen, especially when we have industries clamoring for these materials? Because aluminum is such a valuable resource, this is a prime example of how the free market is not adequately addressing the value of materials.

Aluminum has been the backbone of many recycling systems, yet its recycling rates have remained flat below the 50 percent mark over the past five years, according to EPA estimates (which do not include cans imported for recycling). Aluminum Assn. recycling rates do include growing numbers of cans imported for recycling purposes, according to the Container Recycling Institute, and show rising recycling rates over this same period from 52 percent to 58 percent.

So how can it be when some material pricing is at market highs, U.S. aluminum can recycling rates are not increasing proportionately? Where have we gone so terribly wrong that there is a disconnect between the value of a material and our infrastructure to recapture that material?

Perhaps we have done too good a job on selling convenience and disposability. While our grandparents and great-grandparents of the Depression Era were radical savers, the current generations are so far removed from where things come from that they are also removed from the value of the materials they buy. We have encouraged a system where we blame consumers for not participating in the recycling system, yet we send signals that products are disposable-not valuable-to make it convenient for everyone. Marketing shapes behavior and, as marketers know, consumers are Pavlovian. If consumers are rewarded, they tend to respond.

To incentivize behavior that recognizes the true value of resources, the regulatory response in some states has been container deposits. But we are still throwing away over $1 billion of cans a year so this incentive is not enough. Outside of regulation, there is a role for marketers who influence and shape consumer behavior to get in the game in a coordinated and meaningful way to develop effective recycling messaging that drives consumer behavior, such as through the SPC’s Packaging Recovery Label System.
The alternative is to continue bearing the consequences of some of the lowest recovery rates in developed countries, which equals money down the drain. The idealism that the free market would keep valuable materials out of landfills is not working, so it’s time to think about other market incentives or drivers to prize aluminum and other materials for the valuable resources they are.