Category: Sustainable Packaging Coalition

This summer, Jessica Edington joins the GreenBlue team as a project associate focused on the How2Recycle label program. Jessica comes to GreenBlue with a background in  sustainability consulting in the Washington, D.C. area.
What inspired you to work in the sustainability field?
I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay, and as a child I would participate in the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Clean the Bay Day, where we would row out in canoes and collect litter from the creeks and marshes. I was blown away by the sheer quantity of garbage we collected from such a small area. The experience left a big impact on me, and I knew from a young age that the way Americans deal with waste was a problem and that recycling was one way to fix it, but beyond that I was admittedly pretty ignorant. Years later, while studying English at the College of William & Mary, I decided I wanted to know more about how to “save the environment” and so I spent a semester living in an eco-village in Iceland, studying sustainability. It was here that I really learned about the vast complexity of the underlying systems and challenges we face trying to affect sustainable change in our communities and our planet. My time in Iceland launched my exploration into the many different areas of sustainability, from agriculture to energy to education, and my continued passion for working in the field.
What do you find most challenging?
For me, and I think probably for many people, the most challenging aspect of working in sustainability is not getting overwhelmed and giving into despair when constantly confronted with the scale of issues such as climate change. You have to constantly remind yourself that even the small efforts and small changes, in aggregate, do add up to make a difference.
What do you hope to achieve at GreenBlue?
When I walk into a grocery store, I want to see the How2Recycle label on everything! And not just the national brands with wide reach, but the smaller and “generic” brands as well, because I think that consumers who might have to choose a more economical option should have access to accurate, clear recycling information as well. I would also like to see the How2Recycle label grow an even greater presence in products like toys, electronics, home goods, and e-commerce.
What is the one thing you would like people to know that you do in your personal life to further sustainability?
I tried my hand at a backyard garden once, but my lack of a green thumb meant that failed miserably, so now I opt to get my produce from the farmer’s market while it’s in season, and support local and small-scale agriculture whenever possible.
Favorite outdoor activity
I love anything involving trees — climbing trees, planting trees, walking among trees, setting up a hammock and napping beneath trees…
Happiness is….
Found most often in the simple moments: a cup of tea with honey on a chilly morning; belly-laughing with my husband at our dog’s silly antics; the shade of light filtered through leaves on an afternoon stroll; knitting a cozy wool hat for a loved one.
 
 

The circular economy has undeniably become the trendiest business buzzword in the conversation on packaging sustainability. Building on established themes like zero waste, cradle-to-cradle design, and closed loop systems, the philosophical framework is simple: in a circular economy, we don’t extract virgin non-renewable resources and we don’t generate waste. Instead, industrial outputs become new inputs, and thus some of the environmental burdens of resource extraction and solid waste disposal are averted.
In the world of packaging, circular economy thinking owes much of its popularity to the visual and visceral presence of packaging waste. Companies are doubling down on innovations to alter or improve the recyclability of their packaging. Consumers want to able to recycle, reuse, or compost packaging, and the circular economy model fits with consumer expectations of corporate responsibility.
Circular economy thinking focuses most heavily on material sourcing at the beginning of the life cycle and recovery at the end of life, and although this focus is proving to be an effective catalyst for industry action, it’s important not to lose sight of the overarching considerations for the whole life cycle – including the middle. Circular economy thinking should be paired with life cycle thinking and the “sister” philosophical framework of sustainable materials management. Doing so gives more context to the net environmental impacts resulting from the life cycle of a package, placing emphasis on the outcome of the life cycle in addition to its shape. Together, these approaches promote pragmatic, meaningful gains in impact reduction along with the long-term vision of a materials economy devoid of packaging waste.
At SustPack 2017, our panel discussion on Demystifying Packaging Metrics and KPIs explored ways of benchmarking and measuring progress toward both circular economy and sustainable materials management ideals at the beginning and middle of the life cycle. A key takeaway from the session is the necessity of a suite of key performance indicators (KPIs) working in concert to help guide progress.
Jason Pelz, vice president of environment at Tetra Pak, a food processing and packaging solutions company, shared the set of indicators being used by the aseptic and gable top carton producer. To address circular economy thinking on the feedstock side, Tetra Pak tracks the percentage of renewable feedstock materials used to make a package and the level of assurance that those materials were responsibly grown and harvested. On the recovery side, Tetra Pak measures the percentage of consumers that could recycle their product, i.e., those with a municipal program that can process their cartons, as well as the percentage of cartons that are recycled. On the sustainable materials management side, Tetra Pak places emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions incurred by both their operations, toward the beginning of the packaging life cycle, and greenhouse gas emissions incurred across the value chain, appropriately addressing the full packaging life cycle and the carbon footprint of the holistic system of using Tetra Pak’s cartons.
When companies are advised to craft and use a set of KPIs to measure sustainability, a common refrain is “Why so many? Isn’t there such a thing as a single unified metric?” The answer is always no.
We’re all tempted to pursue a mythical singular metric that distills all the numerous sustainability considerations and gives one bottom line measure of success, but a suite of KPIs such as those used by Tetra Pak gives a robust view of progress in the multiple dimensions of sustainability. Furthermore, attention will continue to shift across impact areas, and using a suite of KPIs grants flexibility that can keep industry nimble as the understanding of sustainable packaging evolves. Today, resource management and greenhouse gas emissions are the foremost life cycle indicators. In a few years, it may be water consumption, aquatic toxicity, particulate emissions, solid waste to landfill, or something not at all on our radar today. That shouldn’t be intimidating or prohibitive of establishing metrics. The most important action a company can take to improve packaging sustainability is to create KPIs and use them, like Tetra Pak is doing, to ingrain a system of measurement and management around their processes. Change will come and go, but the idea of a systemic approach to gauge success and progress is here to stay.

It’s promising for our future if a sustainability philosophy (circular economy) gets significant attention at a televised global meeting such as the glossy World Economic Forum in Davos. If the “jet-setting C-suite” is now privy to the fact that sustainability could potentially be the best way to mitigate risk in an increasingly complex world (such as partially outlined in Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s The New Plastics Economy: Catalyzing Action report), it means that we can at least have hope that business leaders will rise to fill the void created by the world’s governments facing identity crises and/or those unable or unwilling to make systemic change.
So the fact that over 40 global corporations and organizations have signed on the New Plastics Economy (as well as the similar-in-spirit but different Business Backs Low Carbon) means there is reason for tempered, if not earnest optimism. It is in many ways a relief that a single report is able to capture and explain the momentum around reconceptualizing plastics that has been crystallizing within many organizations and companies for several years now, and point to specifically what that might look like. These important considerations haven’t had quite as broad and deep an audience until the formation of the New Plastics Economy.
On the other hand, it’s no true surprise that an initiative as forward thinking and smart as circular economy, designed and talked about in such a charismatic and compelling way (with pretty PDFs and dynamic web experiences via Ellen MacArthur Foundation and IDEO) would capture the hearts of many.
The flipside to this sense of promise and ambition is the sobering realization that despite dazzling visualizations that demystify potential reuse cycles for plastics or show how to drastically reduce leakage of them into the ocean—the professionals “in the trenches” of packaging sustainability still have to find an actual means to make these enormously large and complicated challenges fathomable, surmountable. In other words, we have to find a literal real life way to make it all work.
Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) is the organization best poised to make many of the New Plastics Economy’s most recent recommendations a reality.
For 13 years, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) has empowered industry to blaze its own path towards well-designed solutions that reflect on-the-ground sustainable packaging realities. Over 175 companies are members of SPC because they know that building resilient, circular packaging requires knowing the context of one’s work, specifically how to use sustainability to create value, and what parts of the future you can not only forecast and prepare for, but proactively design. We do that by facilitating conversation, encouraging harmonization, and analyzing and sharing information. Coincidentally, these are the ‘building blocks’ that the Catalyzing Action report precisely calls as necessary.
This means that SPC is an information broker (such as EPAT, SPC’s Centralized Availability of Recycling study), a tool builder (such as Landscape Assurance Model, How2Compost), and a innovation facilitator (for example, evolving the notion of ‘bioplastics’, taking a position against biodegradability additives).
There are a few SPC projects that are particularly well suited to make the New Plastics Economy a reality—especially where the report talks about the need for feedback loops. Specifically, it recommends, “To successfully implement the [packaging] design changes [required for recyclability], communication between packaging designers at the front end and the after use processors at the back end is an important enabler. Such feedback loops would also help to understand further design-improvement potential.”
One of SPC’s projects that exactly meets this description is the on-package recycling label system that is changing consumer behavior and being leveraged to inspire design change: How2Recycle.

How2Recycle is a feedback mechanism that is changing packaging design and consumer behavior in several ways. First, the How2Recycle label equips its members with accurate and credible information about the recyclability of their packaging. The Catalyzing Action report says industry should “implement design changes in plastic packaging to improve recycling quality and economics (eg choices of materials, additives, and formats).” The How2Recycle decisionmaking process already takes this spectrum of issues into consideration when it issues each How2Recycle label, so that each package reflects a custom recyclability assessment.
As long as the penetration of the How2Recycle label continues to proliferate in the marketplace, which is informed by the expertise of the APR Design® Guide for Plastics Recyclability and other industry experts, How2Recycle will continue to drive incentives for specific packaging design improvements. Our members tell us that the How2Recycle label triggers internal conversation about recyclability, gives brands an easy way to talk about recyclability with suppliers, and broadens perspective on material and format choices.
Second, How2Recycle is building an online platform for its members that will enable brands to track the recyclability of their packaging portfolio, meaningfully interpret what that means, and then be provided specific, dynamic feedback for them to improve. This could become a critical tool if companies embrace it in order to measure progress towards and eventually hit their emerging corporate recyclability goals.
Third, How2Recycle is a critical feedback loop because it facilitates peer-to-peer competition. With over  60 companies that represent over 500 brands in the marketplace, How2Recycle members are able to see how the recyclability of their packaging stacks up against others’. In some cases, these comparisons create easy opportunities to make design tweaks to get a “better” How2Recycle label. Voluntary programs like How2Recycle that are based on transparency push the entire industry forward.
Fourth, How2Recycle’s influence doesn’t only flow towards brands, but also in the other direction—towards the general public. If 67% of consumers assume that packaging isn’t recyclable if they don’t see a recycling claim on the package (Carton Council, 2016), and if 50% of consumers tell us in our survey that they are changing their behavior as a result of How2Recycle, this means How2Recycle’s actual and potential future impact is significant. Our data suggests that consumers are not only recycling more because of How2Recycle, but recycling more accurately. For example, How2Recycle’s “Empty & Replace Cap” message on plastic bottles adds an important level of detail so that the caps are far more likely to be recovered and don’t end up as litter—especially in the ocean. Additionally, the Not Yet recycled label helps consumers know what they should not recycle, which reduces contamination at recycling facilities.
How2Recycle is not the only SPC project that supports the idea of a new plastics economy.
Importantly, SPC events such as SustPack and SPC Advance (each fall) transcend traditional silos along the value chain; these conferences bring hundreds of companies into the same room in order to hash out the detailed opportunities and challenges in packaging sustainability. For example, Amazon’s presentation at SustPack in April explored how to design packaging for e-commerce that reduces waste and minimizes damage. In turn, SPC events allow our members to benchmark themselves against the innovation curve. This information means that the professionals within SPC companies can make the internal argument to acquire better resources to accomplish more work—once they understand what industry leadership is looking like and what they need to do in order to stay innovative.
SPC also offers The Essentials of Sustainable Packaging customized training courses that provide companies a comprehensive introduction to sustainability considerations across the packaging life cycle: sourcing, design, recovery, and beyond. By traveling to brandowners’ headquarters, SPC staff talks to design and sustainability teams about how to balance tradeoffs in packaging design considerations and analyze attributes such as forest certification or recycled content. Through this course, SPC is setting companies free with critical information to make their circular economy ambitions come to life.
ASTRX, Applying Systems Thinking to Recycling, is a joint project between SPC and The Recycling Partnership. This new initiative will build a roadmap for a stronger American recycling industry by diving deep into how materials flow through each of the five elements of recycling: end markets, reprocessing, sortation, collection, and consumer engagement. To increase recovery, ASTRX will examine each element of the recycling system, identify barriers to recovering more high quality materials, and develop solutions that support each element and thus help the recycling system as a whole.
The Catalyzing Action report also calls for “scaling up compostable plastics in order to capture nutrient-contaminated packaging.” SPC’s parent nonprofit, GreenBlue, has developed the Composting Collaborative—a group that unites composters, consumer-facing businesses, and policymakers to accelerate composting access and infrastructure in North America. Additionally, SPC will release findings this spring from the Value of Compostable Packaging measurement project, that demonstrates to what extent compostable packaging can play a role in capturing food waste that would otherwise go to landfill.
SPC has both the vision and the means to make the future of new plastic real.
But in order to truly make it all work, as a collective, we have to wade through the Everglades. We have to lay down transatlantic fiber optic cables with our bare hands. This sort of work requires self-awareness, humility, and discipline.
Kelly Cramer wrote a companion piece to this article that can be found on GreenBiz.

Packaging development is slow, expensive, and hard. The four panelists speaking to Alternative Tech and Packaging at SustPack 2017 underscored this reality and called on the industry to get smart and do it fast.
Frankly, there’s a lot at stake. Dr. Andrew Hurley, Assistant Professor of Packaging Science at Clemson University, set the stage by explaining that an astounding 93% of new products fail within six months of entering the market. And, while packaging is only one factor that contributes to the success or failure of products, it’s a big factor. There is an enormous amount of time, effort, and resources going into a process and product that’s never fully realized.
Today, Hurley explained, most packaging design choices are made by gut-feel. It’s amazing to think that in this day and age, with incredibly powerful tools at our disposal to track eye movement and gather biometric data, we’re still making decisions like Don Draper on Mad Men. All that’s missing are the old fashions.
After conducting more than 1,300 studies with the Sonoco Institute for Packaging Design and Graphics at Clemson, though, Hurley is a clear voice that data-driven decisions aren’t out of reach. Really, they’re quite attainable. House Autry Mills’ Vice President of Marketing, Michael Ganey, is a testament to this fact. After leading a packaging overhaul of House Autry’s milled products that was guided by data Hurley’s team generated, sales increased by 5.5%. Not only was the biometric data able to guide precision decision-making on adjusting graphics, colors, and design, but Ganey reflected that it was an invaluable tool to communicate their design choices with executives. Without irrefutable data, Ganey shared, executives may be more likely to make snap decisions based on personal preferences that may not resonate with consumers.
Coming from a tech background, it is particularly apparent to Adam Harris, Director of Business Development and Innovation at Packlane, that the packaging space as a whole has yet to embrace big data. This has real implications for packaging manufacturers or brands that use packaging to be resilient in a crowded marketplace. Harris expressed that Packlane initially anticipated being most relevant to smaller operations that don’t have the expertise, time, or capital to design and source their own packaging. But, Packlane’s optimized supply chain has proved equally coveted by household names like Ghirardelli, Red Bull, UPS, and Walmart, among others.
This epiphany illustrates Harris’ claim that there are still huge efficiency gains that haven’t been realized in packaging production and distribution by publicly traded companies and start-ups alike. Interestingly, Harris compared the state of packaging supply chains today to that of taxis before Uber and Lyft came onto the scene. Taxis would respond to calls over the radio, blind to their location relative to the rider. In contrast, Packlane outsources production to manufacturers nearest the client, much like Uber and Lyft linking riders to nearby drivers.
Similarly to how Packlane enables smaller outfits to design high-quality packaging in small quantities, Tyler Matusevich, Senior Sustainability Specialist for the Americas at UPM, shared the news of a recent partnership with Finnish craft brewery Saimaan Juomatehdas. The two companies innovated together to meet the needs of small-run packages. With direct printing on Saimaan Juomatehdas’ aluminum cans a cost and capital-prohibitive endeavor, UPM transported the equipment necessary to use UPM Raflatac’s VANISH™ label on small batch craft beer. Both UPM and Packlane’s efforts to provide high quality, cost-effective, and flexible packaging solutions, have in effect democratized packaging. Without right-sized services, smaller outfits would be put at a significant disadvantage in providing striking and affordable packaging to its customers.
In much the same way, Hurley highlights that accessible prototyping and testing is a huge benefit to companies that’s largely unrealized by the packaging industry. Hurley quips that since “Statistically, you’re going to fail. So why not get it over with?” Working through ineffective designs before mass-production by leveraging precise data and actionable feedback from testing can save large sums compared to conventional retroactive approaches to fine tune packaging designs.
The strategies illustrated by Hurley, Ganey, Matusevich, and Harris pose big questions to much of the packaging community. Will biometric data testing become quotidien in R&D? Will right-sized approaches to production and distribution activate untapped market segments? Irrespective of a company’s size, it appears that alternative tech will only become more critical to remain competitive in a crowded marketplace and CPG landscape.

As more cities begin to leverage circular economy principles to reach ambitious zero waste goals, ensuring that packaging is both recoverable and recovered will be hallmarks of any successful plan. In recent years, cities have become bolder in categorically banning or mandating certain packaging types in attempts to match what packaging is being sold or distributed and what a given city’s recycling and composting systems can currently process.
The first wave of city-led packaging bans largely honed in on foam polystyrene (PS), perceived by many cities as a problematic packaging substrate due to the confluence of several factors. Namely, the reality that less than 20% of Americans have access to recycling infrastructure for foam PS and the high incidence of PS packages and PS microplastics in marine environments. After a few of early outliers, more than 96 distinct city ordinances have banned PS since 2008.
However, in the last few years, several cities have changed tack in approaching packaging requirements. Though straight-forward bans are still being implemented in many areas, cities like Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Minneapolis have gone a step further and passed ordinances that deem recyclable and compostable packaging compliant and non-recyclable or compostable packaging non-compliant. While common in Europe, this tactic is certainly more progressive for American cities. The practice of more hands-on specifications for packaging has even permeated national governments in Europe, led by France mandating that all single-use food serviceware be home compostable by 2020.
Yet, the compliant and non-compliant packaging established by Seattle, D.C., and Minneapolis paint packages with very broad strokes. In terms of compliant packages that are recyclable, Minneapolis categorizes “glass bottles, aluminum cans and some plastic food and beverage packaging” as recyclable and names PET, HDPE, and PP as preferred plastics since robust markets exist. In a similar, but slightly more specific way, the Mayor’s List of Recyclables and Compostables for D.C. considers packaging to be recyclable if “made solely out of one of the following resin types”: PET, HDPE, LDPE, PP, and PS.
Overall, it’s exciting to see cities start to curate packaging that’s sold or distributed to match the local recycling infrastructure and note the importance of strong end markets. But, needless to say, just because a package is made of a recyclable resin, does not mean that problematic colorants, inks, fillers, labels, adhesives, additives, barrier layers, or closures render a given package unrecyclable according to the Association of Plastics Recyclers’ Design Guide. Even though PET has a strong end market, for instance, if a PET package is opaque, it dramatically reduces the resale value and is considered detrimental to recycling by APR.
Among the compostable packaging sections of these packaging ordinances, there are big differences in how comprehensively each addresses compostability. For instance, some city packaging ordinances strictly govern packages and consider the many incidental items that are associated with food serviceware to be out of scope. Minneapolis, for one, exempts utensils and straws from their Environmentally Acceptable Packaging Ordinance as “they are not packaging items”. The California county of Santa Cruz, on the other hand, is much more comprehensive in their Environmentally Acceptable Packaging Materials Ordinance, which went into effect on January 1, 2017. Santa Cruz illustrates in their guideline for restaurants that plastic straws and plastic stir sticks are unacceptable and that “all to-go cutlery must be certified compostable.”

For composters, a more holistic view is critical in mitigating contamination of post-consumer pick-ups. Principal and Managing Director of the Compost Manufacturing Alliance, Susan Thoman, elucidates that “With all the best intentions, food service operators often spend time and effort procuring compostable service ware, only to substitute what they may believe to be incidental non-compostable components to go with them.” Thoman explains that, “For instance, when appropriate compostable hot or cold cups are sourced, yet the straws and lids used with them are not compostable, the entire set is tossed into the compost collection bin, creating a significant source of contamination for the compost facility.” Justen Garrity, Founder and President of Baltimore-based Veteran Compost echoes Thoman’s thoughts, lamenting that plastic straws and stirrers are Veteran Compost’s most challenging contaminants. While Veteran Compost regularly work with clients to use compostable serviceware, they have had to force the issue when plastic straws have persisted in the organics stream.
Municipality packaging ordinances are generally thorough in detailing compostable items that are within scope, however. St. Louis Park, Minnesota, for example, communicates on their Public Works website that “Unfortunately many paper food service items are lined with plastic, so without a marking that it is compostable or other indication it is not lined, these items should go in the trash.” Moreover, the Minnesota city provides a phone number for residents to ask specific questions and encourages residents to look for signage or to ask restaurant staff. All of these strategies help prevent contamination and stimulate opportunities for further education.
Minneapolis and D.C. also demonstrate important attention to consumer education. Minneapolis’ online program materials explain why terms like degradable, biodegradable, oxo-degradable, and earth friendly are unreliable and don’t mean the same thing as compostable. D.C., on the other hand, draws attention to the fact that while foodservice operators will have to comply with their ordinance and use BPI Certified packaging starting January 1, 2018, there will be a separate acceptance list for compostable materials for all other entities and people once collection services are established in the District. This works to preempt confusion for residents that could mistakenly assume their requirements would match that of commercial foodservice operators in the near term.
D.C. also qualifies their Mayor’s List of Recyclables and Compostables by noting that “In the future, additional product and material types and processing types may be added to the list of what is required to be recycled.” In lieu of the outright ban of yesteryear, these packaging ordinances allow cities to have more flexibility and adapt to changing technologies and innovations that increase recyclability of certain packaging types in the future. St. Louis Park’s ordinance even calls out a mandate to review what packages are acceptable annually. The St. Louis Park ordinance, which was passed unanimously by City Council, is supported by one resident who clarifies that “If we just pick on polystyrene, we’re really not talking about zero waste.”
With pushback an undeniable consequence of these changes, increased costs will likely arise for businesses selling or distributing food serviceware. But, Sue Sanger, a Councilmember of St. Louis Park underscored that in reality, these businesses are currently “off-loading their costs” and that “They may be saving a little money, but the environment is paying the price and frankly the taxpayers are paying the price. Taxpayers are funding the incinerators, the landfills and so on.” While local businesses in Sanger’s area will only have months to comply for most packaging types, some exemptions are in place for small portion cups and PS lids for the time being. Elsewhere, we can expect cities to reduce the quantity of exemptions and shorten the time periods that using non-recyclable or compostable packaging is tolerated.
Indeed, D.C., Minneapolis, and St. Louis Park’s packaging ordinances will likely serve as  a model for other cities looking to move closer to encroaching zero waste goals. For cities that currently have packaging ordinances, we can expect further refinements and tightening of scope. The lessons learned from the smattering of first generation packaging ordinances in all of the cities discussed here will hopefully provide opportunities for improvement in second generation packaging ordinances introduced in coming years. In particular, including food serviceware incidentals like straws, utensils, and stir sticks will make palpable differences in compost manufacturing operations. Similarly, providing more nuanced guidance on what constitutes a recyclable plastic package will go far in ensuring that recyclers are able to collect the highest-value materials that also sort and reprocess correctly. Initiatives likes ASTRX provide guidance for those navigating the recycling system. As cities aim for lasting zero waste solutions, facilitating strong business models for both composters and recyclers is a fundamental that cannot be forgotten.

Not everything is recyclable, and for most unrecyclable packaging, the supremely-coveted designation cannot be obtained without achieving the impossible: creating systemic change within an economically-stressed establishment full of inertia and wary of anything that isn’t a conventional “core” recyclable. The Carton Council did just that, and their replicable method deserve applause.
Acceptance in recycling programs is often measured by examining the instructions given to consumers, so it would seem logical to encourage municipalities to include the item in their recycling instructions and one day declare that the item is accepted enough to be called “recyclable.” This is not what the Carton Council did. The correct way to improve an item’s recyclability is to start three steps beyond collection and work your way back. That means starting with end markets.

First stop: the end market. Without demand from end markets, recycling falls apart. Somebody actually has to want the material, meaning they have to be able to do something with it in an economically-viable way, and this potentially obvious aspect of recycling is too often ignored. The Carton Council addressed this first, working with recycled paper mills to understand how they could utilize the fibers in used aseptic and gabletop cartons and helping them optimize their systems to do so.
Armed with confidence that recovered cartons have a final destination, the next stop is one step back: recycling commodity brokers and the specifications used to sell recovered paper products. Because now that cartons have a destination, they need to get there. Most bale specifications for fiber products were crafted to be applicable to an average mill. Cartons, though, don’t fit with the repulping capabilities of an average mill. Only a select few can process them. A new bale specification was needed. Grade #52 was born, and the path to those select few mills became paved a bit more.
Second stop: Material recovery facilities identify and sort recyclable packaging by unique physical characteristics, and there was not an established sorting method to recover cartons. The exploited physical characteristic of most paper items is their flatness, but cartons, or course, are not flat. The Carton Council had to work with material recovery facilities to identify novel techniques of automated identification and sortation to get those cartons out of a mixed recycling stream and into those grade #52 bales sent to those select few mills. They did that.

Third stop: sortation. It’s time to address the issue of acceptance in collection programs. This part is easy when the last steps are addressed first. When a municipality can be told that their sorting facility can process the material and sell it on the commodity market, why wouldn’t they include the item in their list of accepted recyclables?
The Carton Council has done a tremendous job transforming an unrecyclable item into a recyclable one.. But the work is far from done. Now that cartons are recyclable, we need to see them recycled, because it’s never enough to put a recyclable package on the market and wash your hands of the recycling challenge. So it is with admiration that we celebrate the Carton Council’s accomplishment, and anticipation for other industry groups to replicate their success.
 

2016 started off with high expectations after significant commitments were made at the U.N. COP 21 climate talks in Paris. The world seemed ready to change. Opportunities were outlined for business to contribute to achieving the goals set for the U.S. These included the usual suspects of energy reduction and support for alternative energy but also included new areas of contribution including: support for recycling, support for food waste reduction, sustainable forest management, and reduction of waste to landfill. This was the first time that the connection was made for many people of the potential impact our industry could have on meeting the COP 21 commitments.
Recycling was under fire in 2015 due to weak markets and low prices. Climate change mitigation was a welcome new way to measure the importance of recycling and recovery. In 2015, EPA announced very bold goal of 50-percent reduction of food waste by 2030.  Diverting food waste from the landfill emerged as a significant way to reduce our carbon footprint.

Innovations in sustainable packaging

Innovation and collaboration in the sustainability space is crucial to stay relevant in today’s world. Consumers are pushing our industry to step up our sustainability initiatives and want information and transparency.
In October, TruCost was acquired by the S&P Dow Jones Indices. Trucost is a leader in carbon and environmental data and risk analysis. Alex Matturri, CEO of S&P Dow Jones Indices, said “The demand for environmental, social and governance (ESG) data and indices is growing. The merger positions the combined entity to satisfy growing market demand through new product development and the portfolio carbon footprinting. This is a strong signal that ESG is increasingly important to the corporate sector investors.
In the nonprofit sector we measure success by the impact we make with our resources and how well we deliver on our mission. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s mission is: to bring packaging stakeholders together to catalyze actionable improvements to packaging systems and lend an authoritative voice on issues related to packaging sustainability.
This year we experienced growth in all of our programs and launched several new initiatives. How2Recycle membership grew rapidly to over 60 member companies, whose products comprise thousands of brands, and many members expanded their use of the label across a variety of new packages. This was aided by the release of the Centralized Study on the Availability of Recycling . The study provided new insights into consumer access to recycling and demonstrated that only 53% of Americans have automatic access to curbside.
We launched the How2Compost label and conducted research on the role that compostable packaging can play in food waste diversion from landfill. SPC’s Forest Products Working Group launched a new version of the Environmental Paper Assessment Tool (EPAT 3.0) and partnered with American Forest Foundation to develop a new landscape assurance model for family owned forests.
This years SPC Advance was the largest fall event in SPC history. During the event, a number of exciting announcements were made, including an open invitation to attend our new biopolymer event, SPC Bioplastics Converge, and the creation of ASTRX, a partnership with The Recycling Partnership to map barriers and opportunities within the recycling landscape, and to deliver more high-quality recyclables to the supply chain.

Brands making a difference

Many of our members announced new packaging goals: In October PepsiCo announced a number of new goals including:

• Achieve zero waste to landfill across its direct operations by 2025.
• Reduce the food waste it generates in its direct operations by 50% by 2025.
• Design 100% of its packaging to be recoverable or recyclable by 2025, while partnering to increase packaging recovery and recycling rates.

At the Walmart Sustainable Packaging Summit in October, Walmart launched a new playbook that would focus on three key areas:

• Source Sustainably: maximize recycled and sustainably-sourced renewable content, while enhancing the health of the materials they use in their packaging.
• Optimize Design: find ways to reduce unnecessary packaging materials, such as extra boxes, ties or layers, while maintaining what is necessary to protect the product.
• Support Recycling: increase use of recyclable content, while working to improve infrastructure for hard-to-recycle materials; as well as clearly communicate recyclability using consumer-friendly labels, such as the How2Recycle.

The summit was followed by an additional announcement in November that included new packaging goals. By 2025, Walmart is committed to:

• Achieving zero waste to landfill in Canada, Japan, U.K and the U.S.
• Using 100 percent recyclable packaging for all private-label brands

These are significant because they represent the second wave of sustainability goals and specifically address recyclable packaging. In the past, many companies had weak goals around recycled content and recyclability. These new goals along with the other advancements in the industry over the past year, represent a significant raising of the bar and give us a lot to look forward to as the new year approaches.

On September 20th, California’s state agency CalRecycle approved a formal recommendation to pursue a new course of action towards its aggressive target of 50% packaging waste diversion by 2020, and extended producer responsibility (EPR) is officially on the docket as a potential next step for California. That same day, SPC Advance attendees had the opportunity to hear from Jim Hill, Senior Recycling Specialist at CalRecycle. He addressed the uncertainty – and perhaps at least a small amount of angst – from an audience that tends to be adamant that alternatives to EPR are the way to go.
Jim asked the audience to tap the brakes a little bit. It’s true, he says, that EPR is under strong consideration by the agency. But there are two alternatives that are also under consideration: landfill bans on recyclable packaging, and minimum recycled content requirements. He also reviewed their plastics market development payment program and recycling development zones, which offer interesting opportunities for industry, and reminded the audience of the other two policy drivers: greenhouse gas reduction and marine plastic pollution reduction. The audience was also reminded that CalRecycle engaged with industry in a broad dialogue on the effectiveness of voluntary efforts for packaging waste diversion, and CalRecycle’s ultimate opinion was that industry initiatives did not identify specific activities to meet the reduction goal, identify clear performance metrics, set timelines or offer funding ideas beyond current taxpayer funding. Industry responded with suggestions that CalRecycle data on packaging disposal was flawed and their biggest opportunity for drastic increases in diversion is in organic waste, not packaging.
Despite CalRecycle’s overall opinion of industry efforts, the American Chemistry Council’s WRAP program for plastics bags and film, to which the SPC has strong ties through How2Recycle, seems to have made an impression. Jim addressed the idea that any California program could have exceptions for certain types of packaging, and it seems as though bags and film could be one.
Regardless of what happens, it appears we are at a significant turning point in the U.S. landscape of regulation on packaging waste and recovery. California is making a strong statement. One way or another, the Golden State is determined to reduce their packaging waste by half by 2020. The plan for doing so will be in place by 2017. It will be an interesting year to come.