Sustainable packaging market matures, gets down to business

Sustainability in packaging

These are just a few of the trends evident at the 2011 Sustainability in Packaging conference Feb. 22-24 in Orlando, FL. Sponsored by Pira Intl. and Packaging Digest and Pharmaceutical & Medical Packaging News magazines, the conference hosted more than 200 packaging professionals and 40 presentations—from case studies from major CPGs Coca-Cola, Coty and Danone to new plastic and paper-based packaging technologies from leading and up-and-coming global suppliers.

Many in the packaging industry are now more comfortable with the issues and challenges of sustainability. A getting-down-to-business attitude permeated at this fifth annual event, with profitability and efficiencies widely discussed. "Value" was the word of the day, with many speakers showing exactly how sustainable packaging contributes.

Reuse and refills were mentioned but that's about it. There's not much movement, especially in the U.S., to report in those areas. Reduce is still in fashion, though. The session "The Future of Packaging: Just Add Water" from co-presenters at innovation consulting firm Continuum gave a compelling consumer-driven case for more concentrated products and for thinking big about smaller packages.

But much of the focus in the presentations, and subsequent networking discussions, centered on recycling, recycled-content, renewable materials and packaging standardization/harmonization for efficiencies.

Here are a few highlights:

• Renewable materials (plastic and paper) reigned—Sugar-based and other bioplastics got lots of attention. Add these letters to your bioplastics soup: PTT, PBAT, PBS, PGA (respectively polytrimethylene terephthalate, copolymer polybutylene terephthalate/adipic acid, polybutylene succinate and polyglycolic acid). On the paper side, barrier additives often impair paperboard recyclability; improved water-based coatings could be an option.

• Emphasis on packaging end-of-life—More companies are tasking their packaging designers to consider the package's end of life at its creation stage. Several proponents, including Procter & Gamble, outlined the merits of waste-to-energy incineration. Recycling=green for most consumers, that's why recycling always matters. And it's just a matter of time for extended producer responsibility to hit packaging in the U.S. Will you be ready?

• Carbon footprint takes big steps—Popular in Europe, carbon footprint labels seem to be the most fair in presenting total product/package environmental impact in a simple way that consumers can easily understand. We've seen some labels in the U.S. Will more be coming?

• Demand for data brings out the geek in everyone—More metrics and tools for measuring are coming, but that's a good thing. The industry represented at this conference acknowledged that, when it comes to sustainable packaging, more scientific data is needed to make business decisions and to back up sustainability claims.

During the conference, I posted about 200 tweets from the 23 sessions that I sat in on (many sessions were concurrent). You can still find my tweets, as well as those from other people, by doing a Twitter.com search for #SusPack. Enjoy!

—Lisa McTigue Pierce, Editor