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Can an industry with a ubiquitous presence and far too many stakeholders
to count somehow come together to make real progress on environmental issues,
irrespective of regulatory demands? Can a small group of leading companies
with a shared vision move an unwieldy industry toward sustainability?
Two years ago a small group of professionals gathered in Charlottesville, Va.,
to explore these questions. Their interest was sparked by a cover story in Packaging
World magazine on the application of a cradle-to-cradle approach to the design
and use of packaging, and by a U.S. EPA-sponsored Cradle to Cradle Design Challenge
focused on e-commerce shipping packaging and logistics. What began two years
ago as a workshop to discuss these issues—hosted by the University of Virginia’s
Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, sponsored by McDonough Braungart
Design Chemistry and conducted by the newly formed non-profit GreenBlue—has
begun to take shape as a dynamic and increasingly visible forum for collaboration
and outreach.
The beginning of the 1990s saw increased public and government focus on the environmental
effects of packaging, and many companies invested significantly toward reducing
their packages’ environmental burden. Yet consumers’ focus eventually
waned, even as the growth in convenience-sized packaging complicated the issue.
(Think 20-ounce bottles of soda, consumed and disposed of on the go, instead
of two-liter bottles of soda consumed at home, where they’re easier to
collect for recycling.) Now, however, there is an increasing realization that
the environmental issues associated with packaging are only going to grow in
importance—especially as the huge populations of China, India and other
developing countries transition to a Western-style consumer culture. Not even
the largest of companies, with their enormous volume of packaged products, can
adequately address these challenges alone.
Following nearly a year of planning and discussions, the Sustainable Packaging
Coalition was formally created in March 2004, as a project of GreenBlue, with
a handful of corporate members. Even before the coalition’s official launch,
the group was attracting increasing attention and inquiries from companies all
across the packaging industry’s value chain. At its own events—now
a regular schedule of biannual
meetings—and at other industry gatherings,
such as Pack Expo, the largest packaging show in the western hemisphere, the
vision and activities of the coalition attract growing numbers of prospective
corporate members, as well as interested non-profits and policy-makers.
The coalition’s membership of companies, non-profits and government agencies
now stands at 34. Corporate members include heavyweights from throughout the
value chain: materials producers such as Dow, NatureWorks, MeadWestvaco and DuPont
Soy Polymers; branded product companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever,
Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson and Kraft; and merchants Target, Starbucks,
McDonald’s and Albertsons.
Vision
One of the driving purposes for the coalition is the fundamental need for a shared
vision of an environmentally sustainable future for packaging. So while individual
firms will always formulate their own priorities and strategies for dealing with
the environmental issues of packaging, there is a need for a collective understanding
of the issues and the desired outcome. This is a valuable role for the coalition,
as it “helps industry articulate the concepts of sustainability as it applies
to packaging,” according to Angie Leith, of the U.S. EPA’s Office
of Solid Waste.
“The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is helping to achieve
a major shift in focus toward a cradle-to-cradle approach of looking at resources,
processes and products.”
This cradle-to-cradle approach is what originally drew together the group that
eventually formed the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, and it remains the core
of the group’s vision for packaging. Using nature as a model, this approach
outlines a vision for how materials can sustainably cycle through industry, providing
safe and productive resources for society and commerce without becoming an environmental
burden.
To meet in a concrete way the need for a shared vision, one of the first projects
of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition is the creation of a definition of sustainable
packaging. (See inset: Sustainable Packaging Coalition Projects.) The coalition
is also involved in raising awareness, and in outreach efforts that include co-sponsoring
the inaugural Sustainable Packaging Forum this October in Philadelphia. And the
coalition will increase its external communications significantly as it matures.
Implementation
A shared vision only gets you so far, no matter how compelling it is. So the
coalition is also focused on practical tools for implementation. “We have
a very progressive vision, but we’re grounded in the real things that we
have to do now with the materials that currently exist,” said Anne Johnson,
the coalition’s director. “Of course we want better, more sustainable
materials, but we have to deal with the here and now. How do you bridge vision
with implementation? How do you operationalize all of this?”
Coalition member and 30-year packaging industry veteran Bob Giangiorgi, vice
president of Priority Metrics Group, agrees.
“Sustainable packaging is
not simply an environmental play,” Giangiorgi said, “and the Sustainable
Packaging Coalition can provide leadership in understanding the concept and providing
practical guides on how to advance your sustainable packaging initiatives.”
To begin to bridge the gap between vision and implementation, the Sustainable
Packaging Coalition is working on resources and tools that will allow packaging
developers to apply cradle-to-cradle principles of sustainability as they design
products and systems. (See inset: Sustainable Packaging Coalition Projects.)
These projects are carried out by committees of coalition members that meet frequently,
leveraging their diverse expertise and positions in the value chain.
Collaboration
The Sustainable Packaging Coalition also provides valuable opportunities for
informal collaboration and discussion between member companies. Because the group
includes companies from throughout the value chain, the interaction between members
can spark innovative problem-solving difficult to achieve in many other contexts. “Sharing
best practices, challenges and solutions to our material sourcing and package
development issues (is) invaluable,” said John Delfausse, coalition board
member and vice president of packaging development for Aveda.
To sustain the coalition’s momentum in its projects and outreach, and to
create the kinds of informal interactions members find so valuable, the coalition
holds meetings twice a year. Its fall meeting, which will be hosted this year
in November by Nike in Oregon, is a members-only gathering. The spring meeting
is also open to non-members. (The most recent one was held in March and hosted
by MeadWestvaco in Charleston, S.C.)
In the end, collaboration gives the Sustainable Packaging Coalition perhaps its
greatest potential. Catherine Goodall, of coalition member company Environmental
Packaging International, certainly believes so: “In my opinion, the Sustainable
Packaging Coalition’s strength lies in the willingness of its members to
share their experiences in an effort to minimize the risks, real and perceived,
of trying new packaging designs and technologies.”
Johnson agrees, and is encouraged by the high level of member participation and
motivation. “We’ve had very strong member participation. To be effective,
the Sustainable Packaging Coalition has to be a member-driven organization,” Johnson
remarked. “Members really have to engage and move it forward, because it’s
the leverage of their organizations that will make real change happen.”
So far, the coalition’s prospects for creating positive change look good. |
