GreenBlue staff record their takeaways from the recent SPC Advance.
ADAM GENDELL
Shifting from a mindset of waste management to sustainable materials management will require many industry actors to re-calibrate their definition of success from quick, one-time victories to extended time frames. Considerable differences exist across the vast United States with regards to handling of solid waste, policy incentives, infrastructure, access to services, and fees and penalties. This is a complex system with many gaps and will require collaborative and cooperative efforts to develop consistent services across a diverse population. Nobody is obliged to own the whole system but everyone along the path is obliged to participate fully for the system to work well.
While talking about material sustainability in the context of packaging, the conversation ultimately rest where the perceived focus sits – at the end of its useful life. In the discussions at SPC Advance in Minneapolis, Minnesota, we devoted significant effort on composting of food waste and food service packaging, on recycling infrastructure and access to collection and sorting services, on energy recovery, on labeling for recovery, and honest and meaningful marketing claims. All these conversations are ongoing themes within the packaging community and significant progress is anticipated in the coming years in the form of design for recovery, material innovations, impact measurements and data sharing, and collaborative efforts to raise awareness.
Conspicuously absent in this rich dialogue is the critical and desperate need to enhance the recovery infrastructure – access to compost facilities for organics (including some forms of packaging), balancing the portfolio of end of life treatments to include energy recovery, anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis for instance. This heady topic inevitably comes to a dead stop when ownership and responsibility enters the discussion. Almost instantly the conversations come to a crawl and the critical pieces of funding, policy advocacy, and ownership of traditional externalities associated with the management of the annual packaging waste generated are omitted.
There is a critical need at this juncture to expand the concept of design in a grand way to include mechanisms that answer the ongoing challenge of inconsistent, and at times, outdated material management solutions. It is illogical to innovate at the material and package/product side, and expect that rapid rate of development to be matched at the material collection and reclamation side because the two ends operate independently and under very different market and policy drivers. Designing a well-rounded material recovery technology portfolio hinges on a critical need for funding and policy instruments that support innovations in material manufacturing and end of life collection. Such efforts must put the focus on material development and material stewardship with an eye for the big picture and long term viability through improved material management options.
Industry with its e-NGO and government agency partners have to come together and develop a working plan to support sustainable materials management. Those who benefit directly must rise to the occasion and secure the seed funding to cover a reasonable fraction of the costs of leveling the recovery playing field. One such example is represented by the Closed Loop Fund, a collaborative approach to make funds available via loans for the development of recovery services.
This is a laudable kick-start program and likely much more will be needed to accommodate deficiencies among population centers across the United States. A material consumption system where recovery is entirely externalized to municipalities is inherently unsustainable. With packaging inextricably tied to efficient and effective recovery, maintenance of this status quo system limits the overall progress for material sustainability in all material categories across all population centers across the country. And, product and package sustainability claims remain tenuous at best since the system is far from being sustainable.
Learn more about material recycling at How2Recycle.info | U.S. EPA’s Solid Waste Site |
The urgency of food waste as a global issue is becoming acute as population continues to soar. In a study last year the Natural Resources Defense Fund estimated that 40 percent of edible food goes uneaten in the US, alone. That equates to about $165 billion in wasted food, which occurs throughout the supply chain from inefficient agricultural practices and damage in transit and storage to sale by date labeling that causes consumers to throw out perfectly edible food all too frequently.
From a sustainable materials management perspective, packaging can play a key role in food waste avoidance. It is omnipresent in the food supply chain, carrying crop seeds to farmers, transporting freshly harvested produce to market, keeping perishables fresh, and helping consumers carry groceries home and store them in their kitchens. Therefore, its primary function to prevent the loss of the considerable resources (material and energy) embedded in our food products must be optimized. In other words, packaging is on the front-line of the food waste crisis, whether it is packaging bulk goods or individual products, and it can it be leveraged to alleviate waste at each phase of food production through consumption.
Here are some packaging best practices that can contribute to the reduction of food waste. These ideas are excerpted with slight modification from an in-depth report published in June 2013 by RMIT University, Melbourne Australia. The report was commissioned by the international transport packaging firm CHEP.
- Increase collaboration between farmers, ranchers, food processors, and retailers to identify where food waste is occurring and direct research and investment towards prevention.
- Develop tailored solutions and the design of secondary and tertiary packaging that provide better protection and shelf life for fresh produce and other agricultural products as they move from farm to processor, to wholesaler, to retailer.
- Increase the use of transport packaging that supports recovery of surplus and “unsalable” fresh produce so that it can be diverted to food kitchens or utilized as livestock feed, as appropriate.
- Accelerate development and adoption of new packaging materials and technologies such as modified atmosphere packaging and oxygen scavengers, to extend the shelf life of foods.
- Develop a science-based and standardized process for assignation of “use-by” and “best-before” date marks on primary packaging and educate manufacturers, retailers and consumers about the meaning of these marks to ensure they are understood and followed appropriately.
- Move to product/packaging portioning that caters to changing consumption patterns and smaller households.
- Synchronize supply chains that use intelligent packaging and data to reduce excess or out-of-date stock.
- Increase use of retail ready packaging to reduce double handling to minimize damage and improve stock turnover.
- Print tips for reducing food waste, e.g. using stale bread to make pie crust, and or recipes for left-overs on packaging.
Download the full report
Additionally, GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition can provide packaging design and material selection guidance to optimize food packaging systems based on our sustainable materials management approach and the principles of use wisely, eliminate toxicity and recover more.
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Earth Overshoot Day 2014 – We did it!
Once again, we have proved to ourselves that we can always do it bigger, faster, and better. This week, we continue our 40+ year streak of exceeding our annual biocapacity – our ability to supply the resources we are consuming and process the waste we’ve generated – with August 19 marking this year’s Earth Overshoot Day. If we can think about earth resources in terms of annual budgets, we are over budget for about the 45th consecutive year, and the next four months are on credit…
See what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_aguo7V0Q4
We did this. We have failed miserably. The only way forward is to be accountable and recognize the incredible pressure we are putting on our surroundings. We continue to make decisions based on unbalanced equations. We have a perceived understanding of the value of material outputs and services, while the value of the inputs are disconnected and not completely understood. Without a deeper comprehension of this relationship, we can never hope to stay within budget.
And to some extent, we’ve told ourselves this is ok – we’ve been overshooting for longer than I’ve been alive. Which leads me to ask if the problem is being over budget, or if our budgets are limited by our material and service preferences and the traditional inputs necessary to provide them? Can we grow and strengthen our earth resource budget or at the very least, the reserves? What does the budget look like when all energy inputs are renewable?
Can humans rethink the global material economy to include the costs associated with consumption that are externalized, those burdens passed on to nature and society to balance the economic equations? We will explore aspects of sustainable materials management in the coming blog articles in an attempt to elaborate on the missing pieces of the sustainability equations.
Members across the forest products supply chain met in Charlotte, NC on June 12 for GreenBlue’s first-ever Forest Certification Innovation Summit. The workshop brought together representatives from across the forest products industry including forest owners, loggers, paper manufacturers, printers, brokers, retailers, publishers, professors and more to discuss the value of forest certification and strategies to help drive this value.
Having members from across the entire supply chain in one room provided a unique opportunity to hear diverse perspectives and ideas as participants discussed the challenges of growing forest certification. For example: recognizing the need to better understand value drivers for small landowners in the United States; understanding which customers in the value chain are best positioned to drive adoption; and how to leverage constructive dialogue across the supply chain to grow forest certification.
A day of lively discussion produced interesting takeaways. One of the most valuable takeaways came from small landowners who expressed the need to include or reinforce value drivers outside of those typically associated with forest certification. For example, innovative ways to demonstrate and verify responsible forest management that are more aligned with how their land is being managed, as well as mitigating sourcing risk and concerns about illegal sourcing. At the other end of the supply chain, brand owners communicated the value of forest certification in helping to establish trust with consumers. In this regard, there could be strategies for brands to help make the connection between forest certification and consumer values. By introducing strategies that better align with the most important drivers of forest certification for each link in the value chain, we can begin to achieve the shared goal of responsible forest management.
Since the summit, staff and committee members have been working to utilize the day’s output to develop strategies to deliver the value that supply chain members have indicated would best drive growth. GreenBlue will publish these results and ongoing efforts in an online resource outlining the project process and results up to this point, as well as the strategies to develop and deliver better value moving forward.
We will also continue to conduct outreach with stakeholders across the forest certification supply chain including a workshop at SPC Advance, Thursday, September 11. SPC Advance will give us our first opportunity to share the Summit results with a larger audience, and will help identify participants for the next step in the process – engaging the most important customers. If you are interested in learning more, please reach out to me via email at tom.pollock@greenblue.org.
The next three issues of Fun Facts will focus on GreenBlue’s mission alignment to Sustainable Materials Management, a robust lifecycle framework with three main focuses: 1) Use Wisely looks at material sourcing; 2) Eliminate Toxicity from products and packaging, and 3) and Recover More value from the waste stream.
Eric DesRoberts continues his series of facts and tidbits he’s uncovered during his research to better understand materials used in products and packaging. You can check out his past Fun Facts here.
Use Wisely: Material sourcing and using less material inputs.
Use Wisely is shorthand to explain that at each step of the production life cycle, we must seek to conserve material resources and to keep the embedded energy investment in circulation. The concept of dematerialization means combining various conservation strategies such as reducing the amount of materials needed to provide the function required, extending the service life of products, and eliminating the concept of waste by ensuring that there are robust markets to reutilize post-industrial and post-consumer materials.
- Material input can be defined as the total quantity of material “stuff” moved from nature to create a product or service. Many common materials in today’s society have incredible amounts of inputs from nature, not to mention energy, water, fuel and other demands. Here is how much raw stuff it takes to make these common materials:
MATERIAL kg of stuff / kg of material Virgin Aluminum 85 Recycled Aluminum 3.5 Copper Virgin 500 Copper recycled 10 Cotton 22 Glass 2 Gold 540,000 Plywood 2 Diamonds 5,300,000 EPS-foam 11 Polyethylene 5.4 Paper 15 - Research found an average of 17,000 bits of tiny plastic particles per square kilometer in Lake Michigan. One of the primary sources is believed to be microbeads used in personal care items such as exfoliants. It’s been shown that fish mistake the microbeads for food, demonstrating that these microbeads are polluting the water ecosystem and disrupting the food chain.
- Of the 751 million acres of forestland in the US, 56% is privately owned. Nearly ⅔ of this land is owned by families and individuals. When considering fiber sourcing or land development, the family forest owners are key players in forest sustainability.
- In 2012, there were roughly 6.3 billion mobile phones in use worldwide. For every 41,600 phones recycled, 1 kg of gold is obtained and kept out of landfill. In the US, only 11-14% of all e-waste is recycled, which if applied to the global setting would mean that 5.4 billion phones are not being recycled, and roughly 131,374 kg of gold ($5.3 billion assuming $1,263 per ounce) is not being collected.
- Magnets are the single largest application of rare earths, taking up 21% of the total rare earth production by volume and generating 37% of the total value of the rare earth market. Rare earth metals are used in electronics making e-waste recycling an imperative.
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) held its first “Data Jam” event on June 27, 2014 in Chicago during the week of the AIA conference. So what is a Data Jam you may ask?
In this particular case, it was a gathering of data geeks who are diligently if not enthusiastically working to increase material transparency by providing more and better information to the marketplace. In support of the USGBC’s new Material and Resource credits for LEED v4.0, they brought together for profit and nonprofit organizations representing the diversity of data aggregation, tools, and service providers that have emerged over the past 15 years. Most of these resources are dedicated to helping manufacturers collect and manage data related to health hazards and risk assessments, environmental impact or life cycle assessments, specification and purchasing, as well as other categories that employ sustainability strategies to increase planetary health, while reducing business risk.
The USGBC asked all participants to fill out a survey in advance of our Jam session in order to get our perspective on what the data needs may be for industry and the marketplace. While the results of the survey did not reveal any significant surprises, the USGBC’s efforts to get consensus and a sense of prioritization of these needs and potential solutions was very useful. Below were the two core questions, along with responses in order of importance to the data jam participants:
What does the INDUSTRY need to advance health and environmental issues in building materials selection and manufacturing?
- More data (e.g. product ingredient lists, data on health impacts)
- Better tools (e.g. databases, assessment methodologies)
- Consumer demand for information
- Better data standardization (e.g. standards for data and meta-data reporting)
- Expertise interpreting data (e.g. experts trained in analyzing data)
For the #1 INDUSTRY NEED selected above, what is the best way to address this need?
- Greater industry cooperation around proprietary information
- Cross industry collaboration (e.g., more activities like this data jam)
- Improved consumer education
- More funding
- Reduction in cost (e.g., cost of access to data)
All respondents agreed that material transparency is dependent on increased access to data as well as a diversity of tools and resources designed to provide greater access. Data standardization and better translation of toxicological data into useful information for multiple audiences are also essential ingredients for transparency.
The USGBC event brought together an impressive list of stakeholders who are working on solutions to increase transparency. With that said, the stakeholder group that continues to be poorly represented in all of these meetings I’ve attended are the suppliers who make not only the finished products but also all of the intermediate products that go into the finished product. The only way we will successfully characterize finished products is by reaching far upstream in the value chain to define all of their root level inputs (i.e., mixtures or formulated products and materials, “articles”, that make up complex components and assemblies).
Suppliers of these intermediate products are our primary partners in this endeavor, and as we plan future meetings and data jams, we need to find a better way to get this group at the table. Only with all of these perspectives represented, we will be able to truly assess the best ways to design and implement a more transparent and effective system for communicating the human and environmental health attributes of products.
Take a look at the Material IQ website to learn more about how GreenBlue is working to advance transparency.
This is exactly how Plasticity, a one day forum in NYC I recently attended, was billed, and it delivered. Throughout the day, the speakers and panelists, of which I was one, remained focused on the big picture and solutions for the future; and with good reason. The sustainability advocacy NGO, As You Sow estimates that “over $8 billion in value from packaging alone is left on the table when plastic packaging is sent to landfill.”
With impressive representation from around the globe – from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, the UK, Canada, Costa Rica – the approximately 150 speakers and attendees approached the topic of plastics from a range of perspectives, but with a common starting point: plastics are a valuable resource that are versatile, affordable, convenient and likely inextricable from our everyday lives. In other words, this was not a bash plastics and ban polymers event. Instead, it was a call to recognize plastics as having a considerable role in our materials economy, and a clarion call to stop designing plastics to be thrown away. It was also an exciting exploration of the challenges, opportunities and emerging solutions businesses, NGOs and governments are collaborating on to create the very necessary closed loop for both polymers in the market today and those that will be in the market tomorrow (e.g., biopolymers).
Doug Woodring, founder of The Ocean Recovery Alliance and Plastics Disclosure Project hosted the event. Notables in the sustainability, plastics and recovery arenas such as Bill McDonough, Cradle2Cradle; Steve Russell, American Chemistry Council; and Mike Biddle, MBA Polymers, topped the roster of speakers, which also included a former president of Costa Rica, the head of UK-based TruCost, a lead innovator from Ecovative, and an amazing waste to product (and even buildings) designer from Miniwiz, among others.
The event showcased ideas and latest developments in:
- Using waste as a resource
- Scalable, best practice innovations
- Use of new materials
- Designing for sustainability and
- Solutions for reducing the plastic footprint
As part of a panel on designing for recovery, I kicked off the session by sharing the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s (SPC) Definition of Sustainable Packaging, which can apply seamlessly to products as well. I also discussed the extended parameters designers need to consider beyond the more traditional criteria of cost, performance, quality, aesthetics, and regulatory compliance. These included optimizing resources, responsible sourcing, material health and resource recovery. My copanelists Stephan Clambaneva representing the Industrial Designers Society of America, and Arthur Huang, CEO and Founder of Miniwiz, picked up on the theme of expanded parameters. Huang has even applied expanded parameters to structures, using his company’s trash-to-product material, POLLI-BRICKS to construct a waste recycling facility in Taiwan.
Cool and sexy waste-to-product goods from Waste2Wear, Ekocycle, and Miniwiz were on display, including Miniwiz’s “made from 100% trash” sunglasses that attendees sported to tame the evening sun glare and enjoy views of the new Freedom Tower from the rooftop reception venue.
Consumer education was another theme of the event, as we all play a major role in closing the loop on all materials. Waste2Wear’s child educational video was a great example.
The NYC Forum was the 3rd annual Plasticity event. Woodring promises to key the dialogue going and is considering Barcelona, Spain as the next locale. I sure hope to catch up with some of you there.
When the Specialty Food Association contacted the Sustainable Packaging Coalition looking for Summer Fancy Food Show (SFFS) speakers, I was pretty excited to grab the gig. Fancy food and a whole new group of faces to educate? I’m in.
On June 30, 2014, I attended and spoke at SFFS in New York City. The show was a mix of over 15 sessions and seminars, a show floor of 2,400 exhibitors, and over 24,000 attendees. It was also SPC’s first time working with the Specialty Food Association and the Fancy Food Show. I love fancy food as much as the next person, but it was more than just a tasty opportunity. SFFS was a chance to educate a new crowd and observe an industry with great sustainability potential.
SFFS14 Education Program
The day began with me teaching a one hour session, Sustainable Packaging: What’s New? How Does it Affect Your Business? SPC member Steve Mahler of Caraustar leant a hand during the session and Q&A, offering his unique industry and SPC member perspective. The group was diverse and inquisitive, sticking around to ask more questions. I spent the rest of the day walking the show floor, tasting samples, and talking to vendors.
Everyone has a story
From packaging to product, everyone had a story to share.
The creator of Energyfruits saw parents eating their children’s food products and decided to develop an “adult version.” Admittedly, it felt a little bit like my Capri Sun days, but I could get used to this. It was a convenient counterbalance to all of the sweet treats. Unfortunately, end of life recovery options for flexible pouches remain slim. This was just one of many pouch packages, highlighting the hurdle, and opportunity, in flexible packaging.
The Mason Jar Cookie Company uses their packaging as a defining brand identity. Cookie mix comes in a clear container, with layered ingredients creating an attractive display. As a consumer, it had a familiar “southern feel,” and I can never have too many mason jars. This company connected with me on a personal level, a great asset to creating brand loyalty.
A similar packaging-driving-brand-loyalty example is Salem Baking Company’s cookie tubes. I grew up eating Salem’s Moravian Sugar Cookies in the iconic tubes. It was uplifting to see so many flavors and products. It was icing on the cake for them to ask what I thought about the sustainability of their packaging.
The 2014 Summer Fancy Food Show was a great event, and I look forward to working more with this new group of faces.
Our Forest Certification Innovation Summit, held in Charlotte, NC on June 12, brought together over 60 representatives from across the forest products supply chain and lit the path forward for GreenBlue’s Forest Products Working Group’s ongoing effort to define the value of forest certification. As an immediate follow-up, we talked with some of the event’s sponsors to hear their perspectives on the event. While informal, the interviews are intended to provide insights from different supply chain positions on the major takeaways from the event, as well as explain how this kind of event can help advance the forest products industry.
For the first interview in our series, we sat down with Lisa Stocker, Sustainable Business Manager for Domtar. The Summit was conducted under the Chatham House Rule, so names and organizations will not be attributed to any of the specifics recalled from the event.
GreenBlue: Can you tell us a little about Domtar and how you fit into the forest products industry? Where do you fall in the value chain?
Lisa Stocker: We are the largest integrated marketer and manufacturer of uncoated freesheet paper in North America. We have 13 pulp and paper mills, nine in the United States and four in Canada, with an annual paper production capacity of approximately 3.4 million tons of uncoated paper. Our paper manufacturing operations are supported by 15 converting and distribution operations.
Domtar is next in line behind landowners, forest managers and loggers in the value chain. We rely on wood fiber that comes from actively managed forests owned by our neighbors in the communities surrounding our mills. Most of the wood that goes into the manufacturing process is derived from small pulpwood trees or residual waste generated when local sawmills process logs into lumber. Professional loggers and foresters who work with landowners to maintain ecological values like wildlife habitat and water quality are crucial partners in our supply chain.
The Summit brought together stakeholders from across the forest products supply chain to define the value of forest certification. What were some of your impressions from the discussion tables and interactions with the various value chain members?
I was very impressed by the open and constructive conversations between the wide ranging attendees who had never before been represented in the same room together. I thought the dialogue was rich and revealing, particularly as those from each end of the value chain articulated their respective goals and objectives to each other. I heard common sentiments about the importance of responsible land stewardship, economic value, and community viability.
What do you think were some successes of the Summit and what would you have liked to seen done better?
Certainly, the greatest success was the creation of a comfortable forum for passionate and respectful dialogue, active participation and enthusiasm for the next step. In future sessions, I would like to see even greater landowner and lumber market participation, and inclusion of more NGO stakeholders.
You have been involved in this project since the very beginning, from your perspective, what do you see as the critical next steps for this project?
Action! It strikes me that everyone in the value chain cares about keeping forests as working forests, seeks a return on investment, and recognizes the social value of our community cultures within which we each work and live. Within that overarching common framework, we should be able to create a solution that affirms landowner goals, maintains the economic engines in our communities and provides brand owners with independently verified certainty that the supply chain is indeed sustainable. We can do this!
One of the things that came up in the Summit discussions was expanding the scope of the value chain that we are currently working with. Are there any sectors or specific organizations that you think should be engaged in this work?
As I mentioned earlier, the supply chain for other product sectors that rely on the forest should be part of this conversation. That would include the higher value solid wood sector that begins the pipeline for lumber, engineered wood products, furniture, flooring and other products used by consumers across the globe. I also think that environmental organizations and foundations with similar missions and values should be engaged.
Lisa, I want to thank you and Domtar again for helping us put on the Summit. Is there anything else that you would like to mention about the Summit or project?
Just that there is no question in my mind that this project is necessary and success is vital to maintain the forests and social fabric of North America.
We definitely agree on that last point! Thanks again for taking the time to talk with us; we are looking forward to continuing to work with you.
