Category: Sustainable Packaging Coalition

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A Story of Branded Trash

I am sure all of us at one time or another have taken a walk down a nature trail and found a bit of trash that stood out among the plants or on the path. More often than not the Budweiser_Trashitem is recognized almost instantaneously by its color scheme, shape or material combination – its branding.

We may be irritated by the unsightliness, we may not give it a second thought and meditatively and instinctively pick up the litter for proper disposal later, or we may keep walking. This time of year in a deciduous wood with only brown dried leaves on the ground, even a small item may stand out. Among more urban landscape the litter might just be part of the environs along the roadside or highway entrance. We may scarcely notice it while zipping by in our automobiles. Yet litter as a collection of transactions is quite complex and the pathways that result in the deposited item in places other than the trash bin are many. The composition of the litter too is quite diverse and context specific.

Continue reading “A Story of Branded Trash”
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The SPC's Essentials of Sustainable Packaging

There was one takeaway from the recently released results of the 2013 Packaging Digest Sustainable Packaging survey that struck me as being particularly interesting: when asked what is needed to make packaging more sustainable, more respondents than ever before mentioned a need for their staff to be better trained in the field of sustainable packaging. More training, you say? Fear not, survey respondents, it just so happens that the SPC has a one day training seminar designed to teach the concepts of sustainable packaging to everyone throughout the supply chain.

Haven’t you heard? We call it The Essentials of Sustainable Packaging, and we’ve been teaching this course for years, to hundreds of packaging professionals, on three different continents, with a lot of success.In fact, just last month we brought the course to Oakland, CA and taught it at the headquarters of StopWaste.
One of the things I always enjoy most about teaching the course is the interaction with the participants and the ways in which we always end up learning from each other. It’s no accident that this tends to happen: making packaging more sustainable requires full supply chain engagement and collaboration, and the participants always hail from a diverse set of supply chain positions. It’s perfect. Want to know the brand owner perspective on a sustainability issue? Chances are they’re in the room, and we can ask them. Want to get the opinion of a representative from a government agency? No problem. They’re in the room too.
In Oakland I was particularly struck by the collection of attendees from Recology, CalRecycle, and StopWaste. There we were in the region with the most impressive waste management practices in the country, and in the same room were so many of the individuals responsible for making it happen, all taking part in the same collective conversation about making packaging more sustainable. Mix in our participants hailing from converters, brand owners, retailers, and the line between student and teacher quickly became blurry. But this is expected. It always ends up that the course is much more than a lecture-based seminar – it feels much more like a meeting of the minds, and this instance was no exception. It just reminds that if the packaging community feels that more training is needed, we happen to have the perfect forum to make that happen.

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Sustainable Packaging Coalition

FTC Takes Landmark Enforcement Actions on Green Guides Violations

A few weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced enforcement actions against five companies making deceptive claims for biodegradable plastics, marking the FTC’s first action against biodegradable plastic claims since publishing their recently revised Green Guides. One of these companies, ECM Biofilms, Inc., is a biodegradable additive producer, while the other four, American Plastic Manufacturing, CHAMP, Clear Choice Housewares, Inc., and Carnie Cap, Inc., make and market plastic goods with biodegradable additives.

While each case varies, the FTC’s general assertions are that these companies market their plastics, or additives, as biodegradable in common disposal methods. The FTC found that their products do not degrade within normal disposal parameters, make claims without qualification, and do not have appropriate scientific testing to prove claims. One company in particular, ECM Biofilms, Inc., also used its own “Certificates of Biodegradability of Plastic Products” and provided deceptive marketing materials to distributors.
The FTC also announced an enforcement action against AJM Packaging Corporation, a paper goods company, in violation of a pre-existing 1994 consent order barring them from continued deceptive practices. According to the FTC, the company does not have scientific evidence or substantiation of their claims and as a result, imposed a $450,000 civil penalty for their violation.
The FTC’s enforcement extends to both on-package and off-package marketing claims. These actions bring up two crucial points: are biodegradable additives a sustainable solution and how do companies ensure they make accurate environmental marketing claims?
The FTC requires a product to biodegrade (break down completely and decompose into elements found in nature) within one year in common disposal settings (landfill, litter, or backyard compost) to make an unqualified claim. This has not been the case, as landfills are not designed for biodegradation and the products have failed to show biodegradation in any conditions during the required time frame.
All of this begs the question, are these additives actually a sustainable solution for petroleum based plastics? When they degrade, the environmental investment in the product is lost as recycling or waste to energy are no longer options. Further, when some of these materials are inevitably recycled, they contaminate the recycling stream and risk degrading the performance of the recycled resin.
Biodegradation and environmental marketing are complex issues. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s (SPC) previous study on Biodegradation in Landfills and Industry Leadership Committee on Meaningful Marketing Claims hope to clear up confusion and digest the complexity of these issues. The SPC’s How2Recycle Label also works to alleviate confusion around some of these issues by clearly communicating what to do with a package at end of use with clear on-package labeling.
For an easy read on some of the issues with biodegradables and compostables, take a look at a recent Ask Umbra article.

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Sustainable Packaging Coalition Celebrates America Recycles Day with a Look at How2Recycle Milestones

On this America Recycles Day, GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) celebrates America’s commitment to recycling by taking a look at How2Recycle Label milestones. Sustainability is a journey that relies on good design, accessible infrastructure, and consumer understanding of what, where, and how to recycle.

Sustainable Packaging Coalition member companies and staff identified a need for consistent on-package communication about recyclability of a package. Though consumers want to recycle, our studies found that many consumers are confused about what they can and cannot recycle, and desire clear recycling information on the package itself. The How2Recycle Label Program helps fix this problem by clearly communicating how and where certain materials should be recycled.

 Packages donning the How2Recycle label first entered the market in December, 2011. Since then, How2Recycle has grown from 11 founding participants to 20 with more to be announced soon. Press releases and website updates in the coming weeks will unveil the exciting new participants that will move with How2Recycle into its third year. SPC staff estimate at least 600 different products with How2Recycle Labels will be on shelf by the end of the year.
SPC staff continue to build relationships with partner organizations and consumers to expand the program. This includes collaborative projects with the Flexible Films Recycling Group of the American Chemistry Council, ongoing interactions with government agencies, participation in critical industry conversations, and responding to feedback from consumers.
Through a How2Recycle survey, consumer testing, and social media feedback, the public has expressed their overwhelming support of the program and its participating companies. For example, when referring to how the label made them feel about the company using it, one respondent said, “The company is obviously trying to reduce their carbon footprint and I think that is awesome and commendable.” Another noted, “It shows me the company is taking an active interest in recycling for the future of sustainability and the environment.”

About 75% of survey respondents had a positive experience with the label and about 80% thought more positively of companies if they used How2Recycle. 85% of survey respondents found How2Recycle easy to understand, a critical goal of the program. According to one respondent, “More products should do this!! It takes away the guessing game out of recycling.” Another respondent showed the educational benefit of the label, “I didn’t know that in-store plastic bag drop-offs also accept other types of plastic package film, so now I will start recycling those.”

How2Recycle’s success would not be possible without the pioneering participating companies. Their commitment to clear and concise on-package recycling labels make them leaders in their industry. Melissa Craig of Kellogg’s notes: “Consumers need clear, concise communication when it comes to recycling, so materials that can be reclaimed don’t accidentally end up in landfills. This label helps ensure all packaging components are recycled as intended, to further reduce the environmental impact of our products and promote conservation.”
GreenBlue and the SPC look forward to another successful year helping consumers and companies fulfill their America Recycles Day pledges through the How2Recycle Label Program. Our goal is to have How2Recycle Labels on the majority of consumer-facing packaging by 2016.
Let us know what you’re doing for America Recycles Day, and what you think about our How2Recycle Label on Twitter @How2Recycle or @GreenBlueOrg!

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Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Update from The Fall SPC Members Meeting: CHEP Pallet Tour

I had a chance to tour the CHEP pooled pallet maintenance center during the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s Fall Member Meeting in Florida.

 This was a fascinating look into the world of asset repair that ensures optimal performance and longevity of the wood pallets. This particular facility was operated by CHEP, an SPC member company that manages thousands of sturdy wood pallets in a pooled environment where the pallets are owned and maintained by CHEP. The pallets are treated as assets, and intense effort and scrutiny is afforded on maximizing the life of each pallet.

The process starts with pallets coming to the center for repair and being loaded on to a conveyor that moves them one by one past an inspection station manned by a human who visually surveys each pallet from multiple angles.

CHEP Pallet Inspection Station
Here the inspector will manually pull off damaged parts. Irreparable pallets are removed from the stream and manually hurled off the line. From here the pallet moves to one of several repair stations where the pallet is transferred onto the station.

CHEP Pallet Repair StationThese stations are equipped with a standard toolkit that includes a claw hammer, a specialized long-handled crowbar to rip off boards easily, a reciprocating saw with a metal cutting blade, and a heavy duty nail gun suspended on a spring. (My own pallet deconstruction tool kit used to study pallet construction while I was building the tertiary packaging LCA model for COMPASS 3.0 (Comparative Packaging Assessment) lacked the hefty nail gun.
What struck us most was the fact that though the pallets weighed nearly 65 pounds each and all the conveyance was mechanised, all inspection, dismantling, repair and movement on to the conveyors was essentially a manual process involving men moving adeptly at almost robot-like precision. This was an environment of intense concentration and manual dexterity (See the short video of a repair station in action). Pallets that had been repaired were placed back on the conveyor and moved through a series of rollers that push the nails down to flatten the surface. From there, the pallets are sent to a painting station where a fresh coat of the CHEP blue is applied before the lot is loaded onto flatbeds for delivery.
CHEP Repaired Pallets
All in all, this tour was a hit with the attendees, especially since this is an industrial process rarely seen. It helped confirm aspects of pallet construction and maintenance that I had come to appreciate through my own deconstruction and upcycling activities that let to the eventual LCA model in COMPASS.
Interested in learning more about packaging LCA? Connect with me on Twitter at @amistryman

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Part 4: Life Cycle Assessment – A Blending of Art and Science.

In the last of my four-part series, I’ll describe the new tertiary packaging model in COMPASS® (comparative packaging assessment) which is being released on October 7, 2013.
There is no better way to understand something than to tear it down and rebuild it. At least that’s my motto…sometimes. When it came to building the tertiary packaging model for COMPASS® the research was interesting but it wasn’t until I began to fundamentally unravel several types of pallets that I realized all the thought that goes into designing them to meet the specified use scenarios. In the process, I collected and dismantled block type and stringer type pallets, the kind used to move groceries and construction materials in the U.S., and some specialized pallets used for shipping large office equipment. The goal was to understand the configuration, the nailing pattern, the number and type of fasteners used, the identity of wood types, and the overall weight of the pallet. In the process, I amassed a pile of lumber, some softwood species and some hardwood species, a lot of bent and rusted nails and calloused hands. This was the beginning of the parallel projects—on one hand life cycle data modeling and software development for COMPASS, and on the other hand, utilizing the lumber for creative up-cycling efforts (see A Wood Pallet’s Artful Journey).
The first effort (LCA – Life Cycle Assessment – data modeling and software development for COMPASS) led to collaboration with faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s industry leadership committee (ILC) on transport packaging, and other experts in tertiary packaging. The result was the inclusion of tertiary packaging components into the screening LCA workflow of COMPASS. The new additions expand the packaging system to include primary packages inside secondary shippers with supporting components, and a unit count of these assemblies on a pallet or other B2B delivery format with supporting components such as wraps, straps and cushioning. In effect, the packaging portrayed in the image below plus all the intermediary transportation needed to move packaged goods from manufacture to the retail shelf can now be captured in COMPASS.

Designing Sustainability Into Packaging
The packaging design process, as with other design exercises, starts with a need and moves to ideation. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ideal tool to allow exploration of different concepts to fulfill the identified need, and select the choice that best fits the sustainability priorities of the company and the brand. Through the process, one can quantify environmental impacts for impact categories such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fossil fuel consumption, water consumption, human health, aquatic toxicity and others. Having this kind of information during the early design steps expands the ability of design professionals to include environmental impacts of a package design into the decision-making process along with the more traditional considerations like cost, performance, aesthetic and regulatory parameters. The result is a whole-system perspective that can produce packages that are optimized for a specific set of criteria to be more sustainable.

COMPASS is a streamlined LCA software specifically tailored for packaging design evaluation. It is an effective tool to help make informed design decisions that are aligned with the company’s greater sustainability goals. Leading brands, logistics companies, consultancies, and academic institutions all use COMPASS to build better packaging for today’s marketplace.
New changes in the packaging community related to environmental performance reporting are driving industry toward consistent B2B data sharing and enhanced transparency about the materials and processes used to develop both package and product. In the packaging community, these initiatives include the Global Protocol for Packaging Sustainability (GPPS) and the GS1 reporting standard. The GPPS contains a set of performance indicators for packaging that are now incorporated in the GS1 barcode system and will soon allow easy sharing of key environmental indicator data in the GPPS between trading partners. At stake are such lofty and core sustainability principles as embedding systems thinking into package and product design, benchmarking and performance tracking, and data transparency for B2B supply chain communication. On this path, companies will need a simple way to calculate the impacts associated with their packages for value chain disclosure, and COMPASS can help.
With this expanded model, one can compare primary packaging alternatives starting at the concept stage, include the secondary containment options, factor in tertiary packaging components such as pallets, slip sheets, edge cushion, wraps and straps, and account for all intermediate transportation legs needed to move the finished product to a retail chain. Detailed information such as this can enhance the ability of businesses to incorporate sustainability parameters effectively into operations and incrementally move the overall SOP towards a new norm—one that can lead to an enhanced materials management economy: a sustainable economy.
Such incremental operational improvements are essential to fulfill the vision of sustainable materials management (SMM) where materials are used in a carefully considered and wise manner, where toxicity and adverse effects are minimized or eliminated by design, and where material recovery is optimized so that the materials that are collected can fulfill their full life cycle potential by being available for new packaging and products. Life cycle assessment is the only comprehensive method that can help businesses glean environmental impacts associated with their processes, products, and services. Its widespread usage into everyday practice is essential to measuring and tracking progress to be able to make the necessary course corrections on the sustainability journey towards an industrial system with greater environmental stewardship.
Visit https://design-compass.org or contact me at info@design-compass.org to learn more about LCA or COMPASS. Also, feel free to connect with me on Twitter @amistryman
 
 

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Part 3: A Wood Pallet's Artful Journey

In this part three of a four part series, I’d like to explore the creative side of the life cycle of some pallets. There is a growing urban hobbyists movement that uses the pallet to make basic yet creative products; check out 35 Creative Ways To Recycle Wooden Pallets for examples. Approaching the problem from a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) perspective, however, I became intrigued by the relatively low public profile tertiary packages (sometimes called transport packaging) play in comparison to the flashier on-the-shelf primary packages. Secondary and tertiary packages understandably play the supporting role to the charismatic primary packages that are designed to get our attention. Yet without the supporting cast, the lead role would scarcely be very effective.

As the product owner of GreenBlue’s COMPASS® (comparative packaging assessment), an LCA tool tailored for packaging design evaluation and improvement, I was interested in developing a comprehensive model that applies LCA to quantify the environmental burdens associated with the entire packaging system needed to deliver a product to the store shelf, including all the intermediate steps. Along with the requisite research, software development, data modeling, and validation steps, I also embarked on a journey to learn about the materials that made up the ubiquitous wood pallet. I was interested in the potential of the materials—not mere reuse or recycle, but potentially up-cycling into truly long lived products. There is a lot of hardwood used in pallets made in the U.S. South East and I wanted to explore the potential of the material with its built-in limitations. I had just completed construction of my own Three Beagle Workshop, and this challenge was perfect for my interest in multimedia art made with materials from found objects. And, I found pallets almost everywhere!

The first task was to tear down a few pallets and see what made them work. It seemed simple enough a task, but it proved be more difficult than expected. You see, pallets, even the expendable types, are very well constructed and able to withstand a great deal of force. Muscle power wasn’t enough to produce usable pieces of lumber so I employed power tools and decided to cut the nails instead of pulling them out to separate the various parts. This worked well and I soon had a decent pile of wood parts of fairly uniform, though worn, looking lumber. The next, more creative part of the job was to envision the potential locked within the limited configuration of the boards and planks.  I was intent on producing a product that did not resemble a pallet as the example in the above link, and still retained the distinct characters of wood that had lived a completely different life. This meant working with the dents, the knots, and most of all lumber with nails in them!

The first couple of products still had remnants of the pallet. Here is one 48″x48″ 2-way entry stringer type pallet reconfigured into a potting table:

   

pallet potting table

 And a sturdy European block pallet (EPAL) that had some mass to it. It became the base for a small wood shed to complement the backyard fire pit. Both of these items were functional and long-lived, yet they reveal the pallet origins, so back to the drawing board. Both pallets were destined to be hauled away in the municipal solid waste (MSW) and disposed at the landfill or at best turned into mulch.
   
 
Any woodworker knows the havoc nails in wood can cause on hand and power tools alike. But, I was determined, and with a bit of planning and patience, success! Here is the result of patience and working with the limitation imposed by the materials at hand. In the end, the success was more rewarding because the final product proudly exhibited the scars borne of the past life of the lumber. And, from an aesthetic perspective, the piece below reveals the grace that comes from passage of time and weathering. See for yourself:



dining table made from pallets   pallet dining table
Of course, there was a pile of spare parts that couldn’t be thrown away. When the opportunity to design a display for a collection of native bird painting arose, they were just perfect. With a bit of imagination those bits and pieces from several pallets were reborn as a gallery display for Virginia bird paintings.
Creative Things to Do With Pallets Photo Display     creative reuse photo tree display made from pallets
This creative process of tearing down wooden pallets paralleled the LCA model development process for COMPASS, and invariably influenced the nuances therein. In the next and final article, we will examine the depth of the tertiary packaging model in COMPASS.
Until then, if you want to keep the conversation going, connect with me on Twitter at @amistryman or comment below.

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Part 2: Secondary and Tertiary Packaging in Municipal Solid Waste

Tertiary Packaging And Compass Continued…

Let’s start part two of our four-part series with some basic facts about packaging in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). In 2011, the overall recovery of packaging material was at approximately 51% with corrugated board and steel leading the charge in terms of highest material recovery. The overall rate is deceiving because the highly recovered materials such as steel and corrugated board skew the average as seen in the graphs below (2013, US EPA 2011 Facts and Figures Fact Sheet) and in this great infographic from the U.S. EPA.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
In this post, I’d like to focus on the types of packaging that work in the background to bring the huge assortment of products we buy (fresh and packaged food, cosmetics, detergent, medicine, car parts, clothing, shoes, sporting goods, etc. ) to the shops we frequent. These packages have no fancy font, color, imagery or shape to catch your eye. In fact, many of them are plain brown corrugated boxes that make up the bulk of secondary packages and are recovered at a rate of about 91%. This recovered fiber is reused to make many types of paper products including new corrugated boxes. On the tertiary packaging front, wood plays a prominent role in the form of pallets and crates. Pallets are the workhorses of industrial packaging and come in a large variety of configurations to accommodate the various industrial specifications.
Companies such as CHEP manage many wood pallet configurations as a pooled resource with relatively long life span. These pallets are used and repaired many times to maximize the investment in material, cost, and design. Pallets also come in expendable variety that are typically used only once or a few times and then discarded. It is the expendable variety that we see in the back of grocery stores or the big box stores. These pallets sometimes find their way into the MSW and are included in the data above as “wood.”
Every year, 1.9 billion wooden pallets are in circulation in the United States, transporting a variety of goods.[1] Depending on the way the pallets are manufactured and managed, their life span and possibly their fate at end of useful life varies. Managed or pooled pallets are repaired multiple times to extend the life of the asset. They are sturdier to begin with to accommodate a relatively longer life. They may be broken down into parts to be reused to repair other pallets in the pool. On the other hand, expendable pallets may not be as sturdy as reusable types. The material investment is not managed as an asset and hence has a higher probability of disposal via landfill or incineration.
So, where do all the pallets go? 

  • Recycle – Wood from pallets is often mulched and used as landscape material. Some pallets are creatively recycled into useful household craft. See next article for examples from the Three Beagle Workshop.
  • Reuse – pallets are collected, repaired, and sold in a secondary market.
  • Incinerate – some fraction of wood pallets end up at waste to energy (WtE) facilities where the materials are incinerated and the resultant energy is used for heat or electricity generation
  • Dispose – to landfill

In the next installment, we will look at pallets in a more creative light and see what happens to some of pallets in circulation.

[1] 2013, IFCO. http://palletsbyifco.com/recycling/, accessed 19 August 2013.

 
 

 

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Part 1: Packaging System and Sustainability

Tertiary Packaging and COMPASS®

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition began in 2005 with the Definition of Sustainable Packaging that emphasizes the responsible use of materials for packaging using a life-cycle approach.  A great deal of the effort has been focused on improving the primary packages—the ones we take home that physically contain the product companies are selling. Innovations in packaging design and materials have continued at a steady pace to adapt to changing market trends, consumer preferences, regulations, and waste reduction efforts. These changes are quite visible on the shelves of our favorite shops. With that said, there are other kinds of packaging that provide crucial services behind the scenes that shoppers may not think about but are vital in delivering products to our favorite shops’ shelves.
This packaging is sometimes referred to as secondary and tertiary packaging and is used for business-to-business (B2B) transactions. A common example of secondary package is the ubiquitous brown corrugated box. A wood pallet, the kind we see behind the grocery store or at big box stores, exemplifies a tertiary package. Both secondary and tertiary packaging may be used to collate goods for delivery. Each type of package is developed to serve a specific service with the goal of delivering the product safely and intact from the manufacturer to the end user. The image below illustrates the different packages and their general role beginning with the wine bottle as the primary package, providing direct protection and marketing appeal for the product, the box with its foam cushion as the secondary package, protecting the larger grouping of the product, and the pallet as the tertiary package, providing the support necessary for safe transport of the product to its destination.

Of course, this is a simplified illustration and there are many other variables that need to be accounted for in order to deliver the product to the shop shelf. Factors that influence the types and combination of packaging employed may include things like product weight and fragility, spoilage consideration, stacking strength, temperature and weather, transport method, etc. These complexities go into the ultimate design of the system, and sustainability outcomes need to be included in the design flow to assess the impact of delivering the product. In order to improve the system one must be able to quantify the implications of everything that goes into making the items that make up the whole delivery system. In the illustration above, this includes all the materials (glass, metal, paperboard, plastics, wood etc.), the processes needed to make the packaging from the materials, any supplemental components needed such as plastic wrap or straps, and the overall implications to transportation.
The discipline of life cycle assessment (LCA) provides a convenient tool that is increasingly used by designers and companies to develop a model that quantifies the overall environmental burdens associated with product and service delivery. Quantification of environmental impacts can help improve the choices made during the design process to positively impact the corporate sustainability strategy. GreenBlue’s COMPASS® (comparative packaging assessment) is an LCA tool tailored for packaging design evaluation and improvement. Historically, it’s been used for optimizing the primary packaging. But, this October, COMPASS will start to include a new model to quantify the entire system, to include both single use and reusable tertiary packaging.
In the next installment, we will examine packaging in the solid waste stream, in particular secondary and tertiary packaging and what happens to those materials.

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Meditating on Sustainable Materials Management

Last week about a thousand people attended the Together for a Better Planet – Sustainability Forum in Mexico City. Jeff Wooster, GreenBlue board member, and I were among them. The event presented opportunities for companies to showcase products and services with the potential to reduce environmental burdens of various industrial necessities. There were displays of solar panels, wind turbines, electric delivery vehicles, commercial lighting, packaging, agricultural production, etc. The hope with all of this innovation and effort is to allow for the continuation of business while lowering the associated environmental impact over time.
There were discussions on various topics, and one that Jeff and I participated in involved the sustainability of packaging. The panel discussion remained fairly high level and offered a systems perspective for packaged goods. There was much discussion about the recovery of materials from the waste stream and how the bulk of packaging materials end up in landfill or open dumps in Mexico. The small amount of material sorting that occurs in Mexico follows two paths:
Trash collection service is offered in a relatively small part of this enormous and populous city. A crew of half a dozen or more men pick through materials of interest as the truck moves down the street. Keep in mind that all the stuff is commingled trash – wet organic and food waste, paper and board, plastics, metals, glass and all sorts of other refuse. The men work fast and efficiently, and surprisingly in a jovial manner, yet many of them are working with their bare hands to pick the valuable materials.


The second pathway of material recovery occurs at the landfills or dumps, and is an informal mechanism powered by poverty and necessity. Here pickers, the poorest among the poor, risk injury, sickness, and indignity to earn pennies. They pick valuable materials for recycling in an informal material economy. The work is menial, dirty, unsanitary, unsafe, and often occurs under harsh weather conditions. The recovered materials, the fruits of the pickers long hours of labor, probably yields a substandard market price. This is because the materials were collected from a dump of mixed contaminated source; hence the quality of those materials is generally poor. Many high value materials such a s paper and board are rendered useless for many recycled applications due to being wet and adherence of foreign matter. After all of this effort, these materials are destined for lower performance usage and much of the embedded energy – both base materials and human energy – is lost.

I presented the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s How2Recycle label that provides a clear and consistent means to communicate actions needed for proper disposal of packaging to optimize recovery. In Mexico, where recycling infrastructure is lacking and the ethic of material stewardship is underdeveloped, such communication combined with packaging waste bring sites can engage the citizens to do their part in closing the material loop. Engaging the citizens in material stewardship has long-term benefits for a more sustainable world, and can move society away from a use and throw model to a sustainable materials management (SMM) model where technical materials flow back into the cycle to be reborn as new packaging or product components.
Outlining the story of a company’s stewardship in combination with the How2Recycle recycling label is an opportunity to show the company’s determination to make sustainable material management a priority. It can help reinforce the critical role citizens play in closing the loop on packaging material recovery, and develop the recycling ethic in citizens, particularly children, that can bear long-term fruits in developing a sustainable material economy.
A brief anecdote from the streets of Mexico City:
One man’s trash is another man’s _________.
After the conference I moved from the posh Polanco area where the event was held to a hotel in the historic district. As I made my way from the Isabel la Catolica metro station, I saw a homeless man with natty dreads and messy clothing moving towards me. Such apparitions intrigue me and this one did not disappoint. The man had a faraway look in his eyes and he did not see me, or anyone else, and I might guess the throng scarcely noticed him.
This man’s manner was of great interest to me. He was simultaneously of the immediate environs yet somehow outside it. The man meandered through the flow of humanity while slowly and meditatively popping the tiny bubbles on a sheet of bubble wrap. He wasn’t popping the bubbles for apparent amusement or passing of time. His treatment of the packaging material was akin to one engaged in reciting prayer with the rosary beads or other meditative equivalent. He slipped through the random moving bodies about him seemingly aware only of his mumblings and the systematic row-by-row popping of the bubbles.
I observed the man as he moved peacefully through the pandemonium about him. I might say a bit of his peace transferred to me and helped me navigate the rush hour shoulder-to- shoulder metro traffic.