The SPC’s Goals Database & SPC Engage Are Focused on Helping Companies Evaluate, Set and Achieve a Wide Range of Sustainability Goals

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA, FEBRUARY 5TH, 2019 — Today the Sustainable Packaging Coalition launched The Goals Database, a database of industry commitments aimed at improving packaging sustainability. The SPC member-exclusive resource will reflect the public commitments and goals that top brand owners and retailers from across industry sectors have created to improve sustainability in the following categories:
Packaging Sustainability Goal Categories:

• Bio-based/renewable materials
• Eliminate unfavorable materials
• Improving recovery infrastructure
• Increasing recycling
• Material efficiency
• Recyclability
• Recycled content
• Responsible fiber sourcing
• Volumetric efficiency

Corporate Sustainability Goals:

• Energy consumption
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Manufacturing/operational waste
• Renewable/alternative energy
• Water consumption

“We’re seeing unprecedented ambition and breadth in industry goals around sustainable packaging, and the Goals Database allows us bring the sum of the parts into focus.”
Said Adam Gendell, Associate Director of the SPC. “Whether it’s this birds eye view of the industry’s commitments as a whole, an exploration around a specific type of goal, or a look at the commitments of a specific company, there is so much utility in The Goals Database and we’re excited for our members to dive in.”
Close to 100 Fortune 500 and SPC member companies are profiled in the database and hundreds of individual goals are available in this wide-ranging database. This is the first resource that specifically pulls companies’ sustainable packaging goals into one platform.

www.sustainablepackaging.org/goals

SPC Engage 2019

As many brands plan their strategy for the next decade and think about their own sustainable packaging goals, many companies have questions about how they can set goals that fit their company, and then how to create and action plan to achieve them. Fitting with this trend of goal setting, the SPC has also announced a new event, SPC Engage. This new salon-style event will be focused on helping companies set and achieve their sustainability goals, and will be open to SPC members & non-members.
We want to provide a new engagement platform where brands and their supply chain partners can come together to learn more and actively discuss how to execute their packaging sustainability goals,” said Barbara Fowler, Director of Stakeholder Engagement. “SPC Engage will be about how to accomplish those goals.”
Some key themes of this event include: thinking through sustainability goals, the pitfalls, and the right questions to ask; measuring impacts; identifying best-in-class goals and their nuances; and exploring successful strategies that other companies have implemented in their own organizations. The program will be a mix of sessions, panels, and round table discussions that will spark inspiration for new goals and chart the path for new ways of achieving existing goals.
This one-day event will host speakers from General Mills, NatureWorks, PepsiCo, Amcor, Starbucks and more to be announced.
Early bird pricing ends April 12th. This event is co-located with GreenBiz’s Circularity ‘19 in Minneapolis on Monday June 17th.

www.SPCengage.com

Single use plastics have become the focal point for our frustration with plastic waste. Doug Woodring from the Ocean Recovery Alliance wrote in a recent article, “Switching to alternatives might not save the world but the use of single-use plastics sends a distinct message to customers that the brand and its management is not on top of an issue of growing global importance.” Straws are emblematic of our single-use addiction because they are rarely necessary and tossed in a matter of minutes. Recent moves by Starbucks, McDonald’s and others to eliminate straws provides momentum to address the single use challenge. I believe we should embrace this momentum and leverage it to tackle the larger problem of developing system-based solutions for design and recovery of all packaging material types. It’s important that we not get distracted by single substrate solutions.All too often I hear packaging material manufacturers arguing that their specific material is the solution to our infrastructure problems. It’s not that simple.
All packaging materials have environmental impacts. Some have greater impacts at the beginning of life and others at the end of life. We often don’t think about the next life when we are developing packaging. Most materials have an environmental benefit from being recycled. The biggest issue for us to tackle today is creating a value for recycled materials. Materials end up in the ocean because they have no value.
We have two competing trends from different parts of the value chain that we must bring together. On one hand we have corporations increasing their commitments to make packaging from materials that can be recycled. On the other, we have a waste management infrastructure retreating to very basic commodities in response to China’s recent restrictions. A package cannot be considered recyclable if no one wants to use it to make new packaging or products. Many companies are setting challenging targets to make their packaging recyclable or compostable,   are committing to use recycled content, and/or helping with collection. This is a great start but they can’t do it alone. They need support from the rest of the value chain including municipalities who are involved in material recovery and consumers. The recent moves by China to restrict the materials it accepts for recycling has exposed weakness in our recycling system. We have become dependent on China to process our materials and let our own infrastructure decline. Municipalities are struggling to find buyers for their recovered recyclables. Our system is out of balance. We have to recognize that it will take investment to build better infrastructure for recovery here in the U.S.. In the past we have relied on the contribution from the collected materials to help fund the system. It is not enough. We have to tackle the issue of how we will pay to recover materials so that they can be reused and recycled.
There is no one size fits all. Packaging has been evolving rapidly in the last decade and our recycling systems have felt the impact of this change. The good old days of a very simplistic material mix are gone. We have not kept pace with the packaging changes and municipalities are struggling to figure out how to finance collection and recovery of packaging.
It’s time that we start to work together and recognize we need a new approach. Brands, manufacturers, recyclers, localities and NGOs need to put more effort into creating more robust American recycling facilities that are designed for today’s packaging. Let’s not make this a single material issue. Let’s leverage the momentum of the backlash against single use plastics and work to create a system where many materials can be recovered and have value.

At the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s annual open conference, SPC Impact, the variety of attendees is striking, both in terms of industry and function. SPC is a collaborative organization that attracts organizations throughout the value chain – retailers, brand owners, packaging converters, material manufacturers, waste recovery organizations, consultants, and government agencies.

What separates SPC from other industry associations is collaboration to find solutions across the value chain

Derrick Lawrence, Director of Packaging Solutions for Seventh Generation, sits on the End Market Industry Leadership Committee. He says that SPC has been a wonderful resource for finding suppliers, discovering like-minded companies for partnerships, and sharing best practices about what’s going on in the packaging industry around sustainable packaging. It’s also a great forum to share technological advances that may be tricky to communicate with customers, but resonate with others in the industry. SPC has a great cross-section of the entire value chain of packaging — resin manufacturers, converters, brand owners, distribution companies, reclaimers — you don’t find that collection of people all in one place and at same time very often.
Assembling that group of people has sparked great partnerships for Seventh Generation. The company won the 2016 SPC Innovator Award (Formerly known as the “Trashies”) award for partnering with Accredo and Dow to develop a widely recyclable package for dishwasher detergent pods. Derrick said that those partnerships formed because of conversations started at SPC events. He also cited a great partnership with Braskem to enable their use of Green PE in combination post-consumer resin (PCR) HDPE.
This year’s winner of the SPC Innovator Award in the Outcome of a Partnership award also demonstrated the power of collaboration. PepsiCo, Natureworks, Danimer Scientific, Omya, Berry Plastics, and Johnson-Bryce commercialized a new bio-based compound for flexible packaging. PepsiCo worked with key resin manufacturer, NatureWorks, and leading bio-polymer compounder, Danimer Scientific, to produce the new bio-based compounds. Calcium carbonate additives, supplied by Omya, were modified to create the right interaction with the bio-polymers and to make the materials more cost effective. Berry Global adapted its film extrusion lines to handle the compounded resin and produce high-quality films. And converter Johnson Bryce optimized its process to print and laminate the new films. Brad Rodgers, R&D director of sustainable packaging and advanced materials research at PepsiCo, says “PepsiCo has the privilege of working with some great vendors within our supply chain and it is with their help that we were able to introduce the next generation of bio-based/compostable packaging.”
Dave McLain, Market Development Manager at Printpack, sits on the SPC Executive Committee, which is designed to have representatives from each supply chain segment. As a major converter of flexible and specialty rigid packaging for large CPGs, Printpack has seen a strong business value proposition in developing sustainable packaging, as consumers are increasingly asking for it. For Printpack, SPC has been a great one-stop forum for insights across the value chain. Dave sees his role a being the executive committee voice for members in his segment of the supply chain. As such, he works closely with the Multi-Material Flexible Packaging Recovery Industry Leadership Committee and the End Market Industry Leadership Committee. Printpack is a potential end market for PCR resin and works with both groups to figure how to get PCR right. Since consumers are accustomed to the performance, look and feel of packaging made with virgin materials, industry leaders are working together to solve the new challenges of using PCR materials.
Walt Peterson, Manager of Packaging Sustainability at Nestle USA, also sits on the SPC Executive Committee. Like Derrick and Dave, he says SPC is about bringing collaborative ideas to the industry. To him, sustainability is not optional, it’s something companies just have to do. Aligning everyone towards a common goal, like using the How2Recycle® label on packaging, allows the industry to move so much further than each acting alone. The label only works if it’s consistent across companies, and Walt describes SPC as a forum where he feels comfortable even talking to competitors about some of these issues. Nestle recently announced a new plastics strategy, with plastics recyclability and the How2Recycle® label at its core. Walt also sees SPC as a good source of information about what is going on in the industry, fresh ideas, and different points of view.
Weyerhaeuser is a newer member of SPC, having joined about a year ago. Ara Erickson, Sustainable Supply and Value Chain Sr. Manager, says that she started asking where the conversations were really happening around sustainable products and found that the SPC’s Forest Products Working Group (FPWG) is a place where the full supply chain is coming together to talk about how to use forest products in the most responsible way. Weyerhaeuser was the first land manager to join the group, completing the missing link of the supply chain – the original resource. She found that Weyerhaeuser could have a voice to participate, but also that it was an amazing way to understand what large brands, converters of paper products, and consumers on the other side were looking for. Since Weyerhaeuser sits at one end of the supply chain, even Weyerhaeuser’s customers are pretty far down. The FPWGallows a direct conversation with end users of the product in a forum that’s really trying to solve a problem. Ara has found that the conversations have enabled her to help people understand sustainable forest management and the carbon impacts and benefits of wood products, so that those further downstream in the value chain understand the upstream sustainability implications of their decisions. She says she has also learned an incredible amount from people downstream in the supply chain of what responsible forest management can do for them.
Reflecting on SPC as an organization, Ara says that SPC has a very inclusive approach about who participates and really brings people into the conversation, not just companies. SPC makes it clear that members are working together towards solutions and that all members need to bring some type of value and positive intention to the group – it’s not just a sales conference or group of sales teams. She also says that SPC does an excellent job of providing resources, tools, and information tailored to what members really want and need.

SPC Impact provides opportunities to learn and connect

For many attendees, SPC Impact is an opportunity to learn about industry developments and connect with potential partners. Sabrina Burkhardt, Director of Chemical Development at Sustainable Fiber Technologies, says that the conference was a good opportunity to keep up with new developments in sustainable packaging as well as meet with companies that they look forward to working with. Derek Atkinson, Senior Business Director Americas at Total Corbion, finds it valuable to connect with brand owners directly, since Total Corbion’s customers are typically intermediaries. It’s an opportunity to develop a deeper connection with the end customer that material manufacturers don’t always get.
SPC is also a forum for connecting with public sector players. Attendees heard from Teresa Bui of the California Department of Resources and Recycling (CalRecycle) about CalRecycle’s plans for packaging reform, and from Allen Langdon of Recycle BC about how Recycle BC has been successful in collecting materials across a large, sparsely populated area, increasing the potential quantity and quality of recovered materials. The Recycling Partnership, in concert with the Cascadia Consulting Group, also shared the results of their work to use better recycling metrics to improve recycling rates and develop cleaner materials streams in city recycling programs. The USDA Western Regional Research Center also opened its doors to attendees to show how USDA research supports private sector research into using agricultural byproducts in developing sustainable packaging materials. Alli Kingfisher, Materials Management and Sustainability Specialist from the Washington State’s Department of Ecology, says that she was attending the conference to find ways to better work with the private sector in the state’s Waste 2 Resources Program.  
Other attendees use the conference to learn about what’s going on in the industry. John Kraseski, Senior Product Development Specialist at Graphic Packaging International, works with moisture and oxygen barriers for dry food, and was particularly interested in panels on fluorinated chemicals in food packaging. Lili Huang, Product Development Manager at Sephora, saw the conference as an opportunity to learn more about advances in packaging to support her conversations with vendors about developing more sustainable packaging.
SPC has a spirit of collaboration and learning that is clear in all the conference sessions and conversations with attendees. The SPC Innovator award ceremony exemplifies that spirit. The community gathers to celebrate awards in categories such as Packaging Innovation, Breakthrough Process, Outcome of a Partnership, and Outstanding Person. Every award recipient acknowledged the collaboration with others that was integral to their success.
Elaine Hsu is a MBA Candidate 2019 at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

Originally published in GreenBiz
 
Often, it’s hard to see the environmental damage we are doing. We can see some of the effects of too much carbon in the atmosphere but not the acidification of the ocean.
In many respects, plastics have become a poster child for environmental damage. Plastics are visible reminders of waste in the ocean. They float on the surface and wash up on beaches, sometimes a stark reminder of reality in the middle of a vacation.
I believe we can solve this problem and hope that visible progress can challenge us to identify and tackle some of the additional critical issues that we can’t see so clearly.
At the recent World Ocean’s Summit, hosted by The Economist, there were some unfortunate scuffles in which aluminum beverage cans and plastic were pitted against each other in terms of potential end-of-life benefit.
It’s easy to cherry-pick upstream or downstream benefits of specific materials. Both plastic and aluminum benefit from recycling. I believe we should strive to improve all materials to be as sustainable as each can be. Even if all beverages were in aluminum cans, we would still have plastic for a wide variety of other products. It’s really important to focus on how we can collect all materials, not just the ones with a high economic value.
In preparation for the summit, I asked myself these questions:

1. Will we ever achieve the Ellen MacArthur Foundation goal of one type of plastic?

In my opinion, there will never be one plastic to rule them all. Food packaging is a great example. In North America, food waste consumes 21 percent of all fresh water, 19 percent of all fertilizer, 18 percent of cropland and 21 percent of landfill space. About 85 percent of food waste occurs in homes and consumer-facing businesses, according to non-profit ReFED.
Packaging has been driven to protect food and increase shelf life, and that has resulted in a complex variety of engineered plastic multilayer films. These films are incredibly material-efficient at the start of life, consistent with the waste hierarchy that starts with source reduction. While these films have a low carbon footprint, they are not widely recovered or recoverable today.

ele_nik

Most plastic waste appears to come from five developing nations in Asia.

We have established mechanical recycling for rigid polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate and polyethylene. We have less capability for flexible materials. We need to recognize the value of investing in technologies for reprocessing and recovering more materials. We also need to look to some of these innovative technologies to meet the needs of developing countries and help them create value from waste. We may be able to optimize and narrow the types of materials we use and design packaging to be more recyclable, but we also will need to look at expanded recovery technologies to capture more plastic materials.

2. What is sustainable materials management and does it compete with circularity?

I strongly believe we need both. Sustainable materials management (SMM) is a great lens to use in combination with circularity to understand when we are increasing the environmental burden to attain circularity and when we can optimize to achieve both. If we do increase the environmental burden of packaging to gain greater circularity, we should only do it on purpose and not by accident. Unintended consequences should be mitigated by design.

 3. What does circularity mean for plastics today and where can it evolve in the future?

Recyclability is often used interchangeably with circularity, but it’s really a subset of circularity for plastics. I think we need to have a broad conversation about what circularity means for plastics. I propose that circularity may need to be defined differently for different types of materials (metals, paper, plastics).
It is difficult to have a small closed loop for many types of plastics. In some cases, there is a limit to the number of times a material can be mechanically recycled. For example, PET can be upgraded so long as it’s clean; its performance characteristics do not degrade as much as other resins. It’s really important to focus on how we can collect all materials, not just the ones with a high economic value.
Many define recyclability very narrowly. We need to think more broadly about recovery and include an expanded definition of new applications that can include chemical recycling. Chemical recycling offers a wide range of potential new products, from fuels to chemical intermediates and sometimes back to the original plastic monomer. I have heard much more talk about chemical recycling recently as a way to capture and reuse single use plastics.
We see many companies in the Sustainable Packaging Coalition making bold new goals for recyclability, but few are thinking about the idea that we need demand — stimulating end markets for recycled material either in terms of recycled content in packaging or use in other products for the system to work.

Rich Carey

Plastic pollution is an increasing problem in oceans around the world.

The demand for recycled aluminum always has been strong. Not true for plastics.
The virgin resin suppliers continue to announce new capacity without making a commitment to use recycled feedstocks. Brands are caught in the middle. They can use some mechanically recycled content, but to use more they need cleaner feedstock that might only come from chemical recycling. To have true recycling — so plastics are used at their highest value — we need to understand consumer access, sortation in a recycling facility, the ability for the material to actually be reprocessed by mechanical or chemical means, and if there is an end market.
The conversation is dominated by cost considerations that use traditional transactional economic models. The cost of natural capital is never considered.
At GreenBiz 2018, Joel Makower discussed TruCost’s findings that the world’s largest global companies had used twice as much natural capital in 2017 as their combined net income. The exposure previously had been falling. We need a new model that helps us see the true cost of not recovering materials.

4. What impact will China’s National Sword program have on circularity and plastic in the oceans?

In the wake of China’s initiative move to crack down on plastics imports, many U.S. states are advocating going backward and collecting less. The stream has changed so dramatically that many valuable historic materials no longer exist or do so at significantly reduced volumes.
I believe China’s National Sword initiative is a great driver to improve plastics recovery globally. It will be a shame and should be unacceptable if we just divert the material to other Asian countries that are even less equipped to manage the waste materials. We need to reprocess more of our materials where we generate them. We need to create drivers beyond economic value to create demand for reprocessed materials.
As long as there is too much plastic resin and no drivers for the resin producers to be part of the solution, the value of recycled plastics will remain low. As long as there is no demand, there will be no incentive to move toward circularity and waste will continue to be systemic issues.
In the United States, the situation is compounded by the lack of stable financing for collection. I often hear that the plastic waste in the ocean doesn’t come from Europe or America, but if we are shipping our low-value plastics, we are contributing significantly to the problem, not the solution.
America has a long tradition of innovation and creativity. Let’s rise to this challenge and create the change we want to see.

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.

Companies wishing to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution should adapt their packaging systems and strategies to today’s changing circumstances.
In “How the 4th Industrial Revolution will impact packaging, part 1,” we explain how production systems are changing as consumer consumption trends shift. Because packaging touches all products, packaging will also fundamentally change.
Here are seven ideas on how you can adjust to what might well be the new normal.
1. Reconsider the context and friction of your packaging.
As packaging designers reconsider their product/packaging system in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it will be critical to analyze the evolving context and friction of packaging. In this sense, the context of packaging refers to the situation the packaging finds itself in throughout its life.
One example of how the context of packaging is changing is how people are dissembling a shipping carton or pouch in their living room instead of taking only the primary packaging home from the store. One should ask questions like, how do packaging needs change if they don’t need to always be scanned as individual units at a checkout and then be brought home in the trunk?
In turn, the friction of your packaging could refer to the burdens (could be clerical or emotional burdens) that your packaging puts on the consumer or the fulfilment process. For example, how does the friction of unpacking a product impact a consumer’s impression of your brand if the corrugate that used to be invisible, baled up back of house at their local store, is now quite visible to the consumer, needing to be broken down and stuffed into an overflowing curbside recycling bin? What if you’re placing unnecessary friction on the consumer by over-packaging because you’re paranoid about damage, and it ends up damaging your brand equity instead?
For these reasons, one consideration the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry should think seriously about―for long-term brand equity―is investing in curbside recycling infrastructure. If our voice assistant is going to bring our favorite shampoo right to our doorstep in a matter of hours, but we don’t have a smart recycling bin connected to a crazy underground waste network that turns it into another shampoo package, have we really reached the future, or are we creating debt? Non-recoverable packaging, packaging that isn’t sustainably sourced or excess packaging will all look painfully old-fashioned alongside things like artificial intelligence and self-driving cars.
2. Note how Amazon is disrupting the new context and friction of packaging.
Amazon is somewhat radical because it is prominently focusing on tackling what it deems the new “branding shift that is driving a different first moment of truth for customers.” By zeroing in on how people are perceiving and experiencing packaging through ecommerce, Amazon is in many ways facilitating a new era of packaging sustainability. That’s because it’s viewing packaging sustainability more through the eyes of the people, and less through the eyes of the business.
Probably as a direct result of Amazon’s self-identified “obsession” with the customer (which it believes is much different than being competition-focused, technology-focused or business model-focused), it has created the Frustration-Free Packagingcertification. This certification notably requires all packaging materials must be curbside recyclable and designed to reduce waste.
While many brands look to sustainable packaging from the outlook of helping the business save money (for example, by using less materials) or to manage risk (such as moving away from finite materials in a changing climate), Amazon is looking to sustainable packaging so that consumers don’t personally experience frustration. This shift in perspective conveys an implicit understanding of the changing context and friction of packaging. It is also a refreshing example of a company taking responsibility for its own packaging by giving consumers the benefit of the doubt, and removing a burden from their shoulders that was arguably not even theirs to begin with.
3. Embrace collaboration.
Another way to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is by embracing collaboration, which improves connectivity and learning. You can respond faster to change when you’re not in a bubble―and you’re exposed to more helpful information and perspectives, too. Locking yourself away at your headquarters and guarding every aspect of your business like you’re Willy Wonka―that’s not very 2017.
Look to NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to cut through the noise in packaging sustainability in these evolving circumstances, such as the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. The supply chain is rife with various sustainability claims, and many of those claims in emerging sales channels are misleading. Instead of taking each supplier at its word about the recyclability of packaging, brands could collaborate with How2Recycleto get impartial information about their packaging that they can trust.
Companies can also collaborate with each other along the supply chain to unlock new opportunities. For example, Amazon collaborates with brands to optimize packaging design for ecommerce by being transparent across product portfolios about packaging performance data, and by identifying key opportunity areas to drive sustainable packaging solutions.
4. Invest in data acquisition and analysis.
Big Data is part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and it will help packaging adapt and succeed, if companies are serious about getting it and interpreting it properly.
Specifically, packaging damage data will be an essential driver as goods will be moved in such different, dynamic ways than before. Advanced analytics about the supply chain will help companies make their packaging designs more responsive and efficient, and will facilitate transparency about the sourcing and production of packaging materials.
5. Minimize distractions.
There’s a temptation when we dream about and fear an unknowable future to jump to solutions that look like they’re out of The Jetsons out of a desire to dazzle or leapfrog. Many in the packaging world tend to be drawn to the “hottest” new innovations or materials that sound more sustainable but actually may clash with our existing recovery infrastructure. For example, you may not want to slap geolocation hardware onto packaging until, and unless, you can demonstrate that it’s designed for recyclability (and not just begrudgingly tolerated by some recyclers in small quantities).
In other words, don’t just follow shiny things.
6. Equip packaging and sustainability professionals with the right skills and information.
Another variable that will contribute to the natural selection of packaging in the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be skills. Too many packaging professionals―or sustainability professionals―don’t know the fundamentals of packaging sustainability or have a starting point to begin managing tradeoffs.
Courses like the Essentials of Sustainable Packaging and attending events like SPC Advance can help, but companies should make more of an overall investment in sustainability education and talent if we hope to have workforces that understand what life-cycle assessments are and can do, and also have the ability to contextualize and interpret those assessments within the greater product, packaging and logistics systems.
Another skill that isn’t mentioned enough in sustainability is persuasion. If you’re the champion of sustainability and change within your organization and you haven’t got the people above and around you bought into what you’re trying to do, your progress will be limited in these accelerating times. Collecting, curating and interpreting the information available to you, and being able to express and share that in a way that’s meaningful and compelling, will be a true differentiator.
7. Change attitudes and the way decisions get made.
Finally, attitude is going to be key in leveraging packaging opportunities in this revolution. I’ve written before about how sustainability is change, and change is painful; but as we can learn from the natural world, there is no greater threat to survival than resistance to adaptation or inability to adapt.
Part of what this might mean for brand leaders and packaging professionals is to be genuinely open to disruption. As Jeff Bezos explained in his 2017 letter to shareholders, “If you fight [powerful trends], you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind.” The Economist echoed this sentiment recently when it warned(actually in reference to Amazon’s “competitive rivals”): “Settle for mediocrity at [your] peril.”
Attitude is directly linked to how companies make decisions. Decision-making qualities recognized as critical to adaptation in this shifting business world are the ability to be agile and the willingness to act and take risks. In the words of Elon Musk, “If you aren’t failing, you’re aren’t innovating enough.”
I have spoken with people at companies who openly concede they won’t make their packaging more sustainable unless and until their direct national brand competitors are doing so in a way that threatens their sales. Or another company said they’d use the How2Recycle label only if one of their big retail customers literally forced them. So let there be no confusion that there are entire packaging strategies out there built only on begrudgingly following others or the threat of a stick.
While a recent poll found that a little more than a third of retail companies areinvesting in reconfigured fulfillment infrastructure for ecommerce within the next three to five years, “‘organizational inertia” is still the number one obstacle in companies investing in the most important factors driving their business. This reminds me of how Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, reflects on the growing pains she’s observed in recent years as the internet permanently altered journalism:
“One overwhelming message, particularly from Silicon Valley, is that you can’t be frightened of change. A traditional company is the most difficult to pivot and you have to be open to new ideas and not be worried about failure. I think when things are challenging and different, it’s actually also a very exciting time, because it does give you a freedom to try different things…. [Y]ou get a little insular and caught up in your own world and doing things a little bit too much the same way…. This is the problem of very long established companies…. I’ll be the first to admit that at Condé Nast we have been guilty of arrogance—we are Condé Nast, we have always done it this way. We are so busy working at being the best, being perfect, that we haven’t always been open to disruption. I hope that’s changing.”
Wintour has succeeded at maintaining the relevance and popularity of Vogue amongst significant shifts in the fashion and media industries because she recognizes that clothing is a reflection of who people are and the times we live in. As things change, she believes, so should Vogue. Similar to clothing that a person chooses to wear, packaging is a telling expression of a company’s self―that can serve as a mirror of that company’s values.
Who will you be?
“[Do you] wanna embrace your destiny, or [do you] wanna get by[?]” ―Rick Ross, “Nobody”

SPC Members,
At the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, we often find ourselves acting as a voice for our industry. It’s a role we take on seriously and with humility. And now, perhaps more than ever, we find it critical to publicly underscore our enduring commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement.
It’s clear to us that the SPC is uniquely poised to drive momentum towards the greenhouse gas reduction goals set out in the Paris Agreement. As a gathering place for the sustainable packaging community, our members not only have lofty ambitions, but they also have a means and the will to provoke change.
Acknowledging the pivotal role that American retailers, brands, packaging manufacturers and raw material suppliers have in reshaping our carbon landscape, the SPC will continue acting as a nucleus for innovation in sustainable packaging with a renewed intensity.
After more than a decade of success proving the impact of private sector action in sustainability, we have no doubt that our collective capabilities and focus will kindle the change that’s needed.
Resolutely,
Nina Goodrich
SPC Director