4 Predictions for Sustainable Packaging in 20254 Predictions for Sustainable Packaging in 2025

Another year has gone by, and the changes coming up for the packaging industry in 2025 will be foundation shaking. There is a confluence of events leading to these changes. They include consumer weariness, industry recognition of the fact that consumer perceptions ultimately drive policy decisions, and a sea change in political direction around the globe.

Virtually everything I see happening in the packaging universe is being driven by a fervent desire by most consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, and thus their converters, to eliminate or reduce the use of plastics, especially low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene (PS).

Why these? I believe the answer is simple. You can’t make beverage containers with them, and thus it is not easy for consumers to recycle these materials for a variety of reasons that include lack of curbside collection, post-use contamination, and the non-existence of deposit legislation. Like it or not, recycling is all about bottles. (Sorry, PP and PS, but wide-mouth containers don’t count.)

The announcement on December 2, 2024, by Coca-Cola that it is revising its 2030 sustainability goals makes this point perfectly. Here’s what the company said in its press release:

“This evolution is informed by learnings gathered through decades of work in sustainability, periodic assessment of progress and identified challenges. Achieving these ambitions will require continued investments in innovation and infrastructure solutions, enabling legislation and further collaboration with bottling partners, industry peers, local governments and civil society.” 

This is the tip of the packaging sustainability iceberg and, along with similar feelings among virtually all links in the sustainable packaging value chain, here are my four biggest predictions for the coming year:

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The naïve days of corporate managers stating that they will eliminate all plastic in their packaging over the next five to 10 years are behind us. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to reduce its use. Ironically, this new mindset reflects one of the oldest adages made about sustainability: It’s a journey, not a destination.

Instead of calling for 50% reductions in plastic use, we’re going to see much smaller, incremental changes by which LDPE, PP, and PS will be replaced by other materials, especially starch.

Starch is nature’s original polymer, and it has excellent oil and grease resistance properties. It is also relatively inexpensive, recyclable, compostable, bio-based, and has a smaller environmental footprint (that is, greenhouse gas generation) than most traditional fossil fuel-based polymers.

I know there are large starch producers looking to expand the barrier properties to include water vapor and oxygen transmission resistance. They’re also looking at adhesives and binders as new business frontiers.

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Remember Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs? Thanks to similar political leanings by incoming administrations, environmental efforts that do not produce financial returns will also be under attack. The bean counters will now be looking to put a price and a value on sustainability-related investments that include staffing, outreach, and product development.

This does not mean that sustainability efforts will be eliminated. But it most likely means that efforts that cannot be justified financially as business and marketing investments will take a back seat to other projects that can be justified. Converters, compounders, and materials suppliers will need to make their currently sharp financial pencils even sharper.

You should remember that this type of trend can change quickly, as it is driven by political inclinations, social media, and unforeseen events. You cannot afford to take your eye off the sustainability ball.

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And its agonizingly slow and inconsistent progress is the result of bad thinking by those whose businesses needed it the most. The problem: Lack of scale — in three dimensions.

The first dimension is business sustainability. There is not enough profitable capacity today, and there will not be enough tomorrow, to claim that chemical recycling is a viable solution to the lack of overall plastics recycling activity.

The second dimension is collection. The general feeling among many of the plastics companies that invested in chemical recycling research, technology, manufacturing facilities has been “If we build it, they will come.” But it’s not true. The current recycling infrastructure is not set up to supply chemical recyclers with the specific materials they want, or the ones that materials recovery facilities (MRFs) and their customers do not want and will thus sell to chemical recyclers. We were initially led to believe that chemical recycling could handle any plastic item or material, and that’s simply not true.

The third dimension, which ties to the one just above, is consumer marketing. The plastics industry never developed an effort to educate, motivate, and incentivize large groups of target consumers to participate. Ironically, this is probably due to the two previous scale issues: lack of facilities and collection programs.

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Here’s what happened in 2024 alone: Novolex is buying Pactiv Evergreen; after Pactiv and Evergreen merged, went public, and then purchased Fabri-Kal. International Paper and DS Smith are now married. Amcor and Berry are merging. Hershey and Mondelēz are in talks. Arkema/Bostik just bought Dow’s flexible packaging laminating adhesives business. These mergers and acquisitions are being driven by customer and consumer sustainability demands, technological advancements, and operating efficiency improvements.

In the future, there will not be many plastics or paper packaging converters. There will be packaging converters, and they will sell consultatively from a toolbox that is both deep and wide in terms of offered materials, solutions, and related services. Their role in the packaging supply chain will change, as they provide expertise to consumer packaged goods (CPG) customers that can no longer afford to dabble in sustainable packaging projects, programs, and initiatives.

If you’re still living in the past, take off your beer goggles. If you’re living in the present, stand up and take a deep breath. If you want to live in the future, remember that old adage: With change comes opportunity.

I wish you a happy, prosperous, and sustainable New Year.