Sustainable Packaging (Cont’d from Page 4)
have unrecyclable plastic coatings. Smart Planet Tech- nologies developed a recyclable cup solution, and col- laborative efforts such as the NextGen Cup Challenge likely will spur additional advances. Designing for recyclability, however, is not the silver bullet. Used packages need to be recycled. Recycling rates generally have been on the rise in the United States, adding up to about 50 percent of packaging and containers being recycled. However, that is large- ly comprised of paper and cardboard (75 percent of recycled packages). Only about 13 percent of plastic packages are recovered in the U.S.Adding to this, the pandemic led to a decrease in recycling. Companies are improving consumer communication about recycling, such as using the How2Recycle label. There is also investment in developing recycling in- frastructure and collaborating on solutions for harder to recycle items — such as The Recycling Partnership initiatives, the Materials Recovery for the Future initia- tive to increase film collection, the Hefty Energy Bag for chemical recycling, and the Closed Loop Partners funding expansion of recycling capability. To close the recycling loop, the recovered material needs to be used. While companies have committed to using it, fossil fuels prices were declining and then tanked during the pandemic, driving virgin plastic prices well below recovered plastic.The availability of recovered materials also decreased.Undoubtedly, com- panies will question their plans to increase recycled content in the current market. Supporting The End Market Companies relying on recycling as the way to ef- fectively manage their packaging after use have a re- sponsibility to support the end market for recovered material by continuing to use recycled content.There will be obstacles with price and availability, but they can be managed with measures such as investing in infrastructure development and design improvements (such as removing extra packaging material). Responsible fiber sourcing goals were among the first sustainable packaging targets,with many expiring in 2020. Loblaws met its target in 2018 by sourcing recycled or certified fiber. IKEA, Procter & Gamble and most other companies are on track to meet their 2020 targets.While progress has been made, sourcing fiber responsibly is still a gap for too many companies. The Consumer Goods Forum and others also see a need to take fiber sourcing to the next level, reach- ing beyond responsible sourcing for each company’s supply chain to landscape-level approaches that reach additional suppliers within a region and support in-
(Cont’d on Page 9)
6 June 22, 2020 Flexo Market News
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