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Sustainable Packaging Coalition

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

This article by GreenBlue Program Director Anne Johnson appeared in this month’s issue of Packaging Digest, which features a monthly column by GreenBlue staff on packaging sustainability. Read the original article.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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GreenBlue

Standardization and Experimentation Both Needed for Innovation

My colleagues and I have been grappling with what seems to be a persistent conundrum in the sustainability community: that standardization is both a rallying cry of industry and a warning cry of sustainability advocates. Can standardization (via consistent metrics, reporting structures, etc.) help to drive innovation in the long run, or does it instead reinforce the status quo, thwart innovation, and result in higher orders of “sufficiency”?
This is perhaps a false dichotomy, however, as it’s not clear that standardization and innovation are truly at odds with each other. Why should we have to choose between our need to standardize processes versus the desire for continued creativity and experimentation? Ultimately we need both for greater innovation and more sustainable practices.
It is not only PR or marketing departments that want greater consensus and alignment about which sustainability issues are important to prioritize and which are more tangential or well-intentioned “eco-noise.” The ever-present challenge of limited resources (time, attention, human, financial, etc.) with which to explore emerging sustainability issues naturally leads companies to seek standardization to ensure that such exploration is profitable.
But in the eagerness to drive sustainability into something that is more predictable, manageable, and efficient, we must realize that we are just stepping onto the learning curve, not cresting the apex of it. Otherwise the impulse to standardize terminology, conceptual frameworks, what’s important to measure, how it gets measured, and progress assessments may well create another dangerous form of inertia called “sufficiency.” If we drive everything too much toward standardization, sufficiency may move us towards the lowest common denominator—and lose the unpredictable innovation that has defined the sustainability movement.
Like forms of democracy, the human energy, creativity, and experimentation necessary for us to evolve our understanding and practice of sustainability is going to be long, messy, and non-linear. To truly balance the “planet, person, prosperity” equation will require patience, humility, and different measures of progress than we are accustomed to using.
Despite the debate of consistency versus creativity, the truth is sustainability has relied on both standardization and innovation as changes to the status quo often follow the rhythm of divergence and convergence. Pragmatism, caution, predictability, and efficiency favor the forces of convergence (standardization). Creativity, disruptive thinking, risk-taking, and experimentation favor the forces of divergence (experimentation). It is this necessary form of co-dependency that leads to innovation of all sorts. So while one side laments the glacial pace of consistency and the other laments the messiness of the process, we must remember that standardization encourages experimentation, and vice versa, which leads us, unpredictably, to new forms of innovation.

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Uncategorized

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

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

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GreenBlue

Top Five Fun Facts: April

Eric DesRoberts continues his monthly series of facts and tidbits he’s uncovered during his research to better understand products and packaging. You can also check out his past Fun Facts here.
1. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, the liquid refreshment beverage market grew for the second consecutive year to 29.5 billion gallons in 2011.  Energy drinks showed the highest growth rate from 2010 at just over 14%.
2. It is believed that nearly 200 million eggs (~17 million dozen) were purchased for Easter celebrations last year. This is dwarf by the 90 billion (~7.6 billion dozen) produced in 2010.

3. March 22 marked the 19th annual World Water Day. Nearly 900 million people currently lack access to clean water, and this number is expected to increase to 2/3 of the world’s population by 2025.  Here are other fun facts around water demand:

  • The average American household uses 350 gallons of water a day
  • Making a pair of blue jeans requires nearly 2,900 gallons of water
  • It takes three liters of water to make a one liter of water bottle (before the water is added)

4. Each second, 330 people buy something from a Wal-Mart store. At 2.1 million employees world-wide – this is roughly the cumulative population of the 50 smallest countries.
5. Data from the 2011 International Coastal Cleanup revealed that over nine million pounds of trash were collected along shorelines around the World. Cigarettes, caps and lids, and plastic bottles were the top three most commonly collected items.

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GreenBlue

Electrolux's Vacs from the Sea

In researching options for our new office vacuum, we came across Electrolux’s Vacs from the Sea initiative. The purpose of this initiative is to raise awareness about the plastic waste that ends up in oceans and along their shore lines with the hope of increasing recycling efforts.

As the Electrolux team explains on their website:  “Our intention is to bring awareness to the situation and the need for better plastic karma. So far, over 60 million people have been reached and we are continuing the initiative following the great response.”
Along with partners, and in some cases local communities, they organized collection efforts using various methods (beach/coastal cleanup, coral reef diving, and trawling) along and in our five oceans. They then took the reclaimed plastic and created vacuums with statements specific to the region from which the plastic was collected, and each one of the five is a unique work of art.
While Electrolux is not currently able to use the reclaimed ocean plastic in mass production they are thinking of auctioning off one of the vacuums to further research in this area.
“Right now, only post consumer plastic on land meets our commercial safety and quality standards. However, as part of our commitment to researching new materials, we should explore how the ocean plastic might be used in the future, and one such step is to make a single concept vac that we can auction out,” says Electrolux’s Cecilia Nord.
Check out their blog on this great initiative.

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GreenBlue

A World Without Branding

What would the world look like without branding? What if everything in the store came in plain white packaging?

Brand Spirit can answer that. For 100 days, branding professional and Tumblr blogger Andrew Miller is exploring a world without branding. Each day, he paints a new item white, “reducing the object to its purest form.” He is restricting the project to everyday items he finds, is gifted, has laying around the house, or can buy for less than $10. Call it pop art for branding nerds.
Miller’s project reveals a great deal about how we perceive different items. Looking through the photos, I noticed that I identified some items as a product void of branding, and some items by the brand. For example, I immediately identified the Scotch tape and Heinz ketchup packet as tape and ketchup packet. Or the Conair hair dryer as “that purple folding hair dryer I once had.” They are pretty universal shapes, and show just how important branding can be.
On the contrary, I immediately identified Tabasco and Sharpie as Tabasco and Sharpie. My brain practically superimposed their labeling. Both of these items have pretty iconic shapes associated with the product, making shape and form part of brand recognition.
It’s a familiar phenomenon—similar to a generic trademark. Zipper, aspirin, cellophane, and escalator all became so identified with the product that the trademarked name became synonymous with the product.
What do you see when you look at each item?

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GreenBlue

Go Local: Compost

Today’s post features guest contributor Eric Walter, who runs Black Bear Composting, an organics recycling company located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Black Bear Composting helps local business shrink their waste stream by recycling their food scraps via composting.
With all of the benefits of composting commonly given, I have yet to see a story on how composting is a great way to keep things local. Going local—eating local foods, or supporting local businesses—reduces environmental impact by cutting down on transportation. Composting tends to happen locally by its very nature, because the materials being collected for composting are very heavy and can’t be transported long distances economically.
Our clients are taking the densest, heaviest materials (typically food scraps) out of their waste stream and setting them aside for a direct trip to our compost windrows—less than 40 miles away from most customers. The rest of the waste takes an initial trip to a local transfer station about 18 miles away. From there the food scraps we recycled would have otherwise had an additional 70 miles to travel beyond the transfer station for final disposal.

Separating the densest, heaviest part out of the waste stream also cuts the transportation costs of remaining materials. With wet, heavy food out of the mix, dumpsters are lighter to move, thus burning less fuel. Use a compactor on the (now lighter) remaining waste, and you can even collect less often—reducing the transportation footprint even more.
By giving us their food scraps, one of our clients—a 600-student middle school—has reduced its waste by 1,300 pounds per week. That’s 1,300 pounds not traveling an extra 50 miles, for just one school. Imagine that environmental impact multiplied by all schools, business, and households.
By reducing transportation, composting is a great way to shrink your environmental footprint. It deserves to be part of the conversation about ways to go local.

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GreenBlue

Gaming for Sustainability

I hate it when I’m wrong. Who doesn’t? But in this case, I’m happy to admit I was wrong about “gamification,” a concept I was introduced to at the Sustainable Brands ’11 conference in Monterey last June. My reaction was disbelief that gamification—using games to encourage users in certain behaviors—could really influence something as significant as sustainability. Now, I’m thinking gamification may really have a positive, even transformational role to play in promoting and achieving sustainability. What made me reverse my thinking? An initiative being championed and led by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (aka The Gubenator).
I just got clued into a venture Mr. Schwarzenegger is heading with DONG Energy, a Denmark-based leader in renewable technologies, particularly wind energy, and some leaders from the United Nations. It’s a virtual/alternative universe game, along the lines of “Second Life.” Players, or perhaps the more accurate term is avatars, will be able to enter “SUSTAINIA,”an alternative universe where they will be able to apply and implement existing sustainability technologies and best practices to create a virtual reality of what our real world could look like if there was more widespread adoption and implementation of these technologies and practices.
What a great education tool for individual and corporate citizens of all ages and vocations! Due to launch sometime between June and October of this year, it might just be the first online game this IT Luddite actually engages in. I’m really excited. And, it’s got me wondering…is there an opportunity for a business-engaging NGO like GreenBlue to develop a parallel game targeted at Chief Sustainability Officers and other sustainability executives, leaders, and champions, through which they could create an virtual reality version of their companies, and create and demonstrate scenarios by which business and industry can actually redefine growth for a more sustainable future?
 

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Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Culture Shocked in Hong Kong: Aren’t Juice Boxes for Kids?

Last month Senior Project Manager Minal Mistry and I spent ten days in Hong Kong launching the Asian premiere of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s popular training course, The Essentials of Sustainable Packaging. SPC members had suggested bringing the course to China as part of the SPC’s International Education and Outreach initiative, and it brought the total number of countries in which the course has been offered to four. The course was offered twice in Hong Kong, once in a general session coordinated by the Hong Kong Productivity Council and once in a private session for a retail company, and additionally we spent a significant amount of time training a cadre of six professionals who will continue to teach the course throughout China with the SPC’s Hong Kong-based partner, Sustainable Packaging Limited.
Ten days proved to be ample time to feel immersed in an unfamiliar culture, and we experienced many interesting cultural differences, including one specifically related to packaging: the prevalence of beverages in aseptic cartons. On day one when we arrived to meet the future course trainers and commence the “train-the-trainer” portion of our visit, we were quickly offered a citrus-infused herbal tea—in a good old punch-the-straw-through-the-top juice box.
The more we traveled around Hong Kong, the more we realized that this choice of beverage container wasn’t at all out of the ordinary for Hong Kong consumers. Vending machines frequently contained aseptic cartons with every non-carbonated beverage imaginable, and I know I personally enjoyed several juices, teas, and coffee-based drinks from aseptic cartons—all while trying to take myself seriously and not feel like a kid chugging apple juice.

What’s the reason for the difference in “beverage container culture”? My bet is that the Asian preference for non-carbonated beverages plays a role, as might their preference for room-temperature drinks (now think about the sustainability implications of that preference—no refrigeration necessary!). Most of all though, there’s some kind of underlying perception in the US that juice boxes are for kids, and that perception simply does not seem to exist in Hong Kong.

It turned out that the ubiquity of juice boxes was quite helpful, because the aseptic carton is a wonderful example for an instructor in a packaging course. Taking into account the straw and its wrapper, the container includes at least four different major packaging materials in its construction. It uses adhesives and several colors of direct-printed inks. It’s one of the best examples of cube-efficiency. It highlights the often-overlooked sustainability advantage of shelf-stable packaging that does not require refrigeration. The particular carton you see in these photos had thoughtful end-of-life messaging (something to the effect of “pull corners out and flatten before disposal”). It even became the centerpiece of a conversation about packaging legislation and how we try to define categories of packaging (e.g. does the straw wrapper count as beverage packaging?). And of course, it’s a prime example of the changing landscape of recycling.
So thanks go to the Hong Kong culture for providing us with ample opportunities to discuss the aseptic carton in the context of sustainability. And thanks Hong Kong, for reminding me that it’s okay to sip from a juice box while wearing a suit.
 

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Uncategorized

SPC Unveils Spring Meeting Program

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) has announced the final agenda for its Spring Meeting 2012, the group’s largest annual event and one of the longest running sustainable packaging conferences. Green Retail Decisions