End-of-life scenarios run the gamut

This is an excerpt from the session "Meet the Press: CPG Perspective on Packaging Trends" that Packaging Digest directed at Pack Expo 2010.

PD: When most consumers talk about sustainability, they think "recycling." Is that the best end-of-life scenario? What might be better? What about the trend of extended producer responsibility?

Joe Keller, packaging section head, Procter & Gamble: Recycling is not always the best choice. It's a great choice on how to deal with waste. But if you look at the situation in the region, the waste at hand and look at the overall situation before you say, OK, this is the best, given the circumstances.

Regarding extended producer responsibility ... Every entity in the supply and value chain has a role to play. To simply ask companies to pay for packaging waste isn't going to drive right behavior from consumers. What we really need is a reinforcing mechanism to drive consumers to want to recycle instead of just throwing things away in a landfill. It has to be a holistic approach.

Michael Okoroafor, vp packaging, H.J. Heinz: At Heinz, we're trying to push the envelope towards cradle-to-cradle, as opposed to cradle-to-grave, which is what people are used to. We have four basic pillars that we use: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle and Renew. It is something that we've implemented globally. But, not all of them would work in certain regions of the world. Several companies are encouraging recycling. But you've got to look at the entire gamut of reusing, reducing, recycling and accessing renewable resources for this.

Click here to see the full article.