Trends in ‘sustainable’ packaging: a recycling industry perspective

With all the discussion regarding container deposit legislation, packaging regulatory reviews and product stewardship, it is timely to step back and examine the key drivers to sustainable packaging and global trends.

The current Decision Regulatory Impact Statement (DRIS) under development is, in part, in response to a perception that the Australian Packaging Covenant may not meet its targets and a hard-fought campaign to introduce container deposit legislation to Australia by environmental groups, but resisted by the beverage industry in particular.

From ACOR’s perspective, a more fundamental issue is the trend in packaging design towards one-time use justified by the application of life cycle analysis (LCA). Importantly, this framework seeks to minimise resource inputs to achieve fewer ‘bad’ outcomes. However, LCA is fraught with methodological boundary issues and is based on cradle-to-grave thinking in a world of finite resources, and can be easily confused with sustainable packaging.

While LCA does align with the waste hierarchy which speaks of the urgent need for radical reductions in the amount of resources we consume, the waste hierarchy itself is linear, not circular. Manufacturers marketing in consumer packaging or marketers working in packaging companies often produce packaging that reduces resource inputs to principally compete for consumer preferences, which can result in absurdly complex multimaterial containers that are not compatible with recycling systems.

With one fifth of the world’s population, 70% of China’s ‘waste’ is imported and packaging pollution is now seen as a threat to its social stability and economic and environmental sustainability. An amendment to China’s 2003 Cleaner Production Law to include a ban on the production and use of excessive packaging took effect from July 2012. It makes companies responsible for avoiding excessive packaging, with packaging required to contain no more than three layers. China will be one of the first countries to attempt to regulate the volume and materials used in packaging. This is the first step on a long path towards packaging design for recovery by law.

The sustainability of the radical rise in Australian paper and plastics exports is questionable. Quite dramatically, recent contaminated shipments of plastics and other recyclables destined for China were refused entry at customs en masse, regardless of whether a commercial transaction has been completed. There is also now a zero export demand for glass recycling. The lightweighting of glass, justified in LCA/waste hierarchy terms as resource minimisation, has resulted in a 100% recyclable material being smashed into glass fines and rendered unrecyclable by any commercially viable means - a lost resource at the design phase. It seems Australia may no longer be able to just put its recycling on a ship to somewhere else.

To make matters more challenging, internationally, a packaging consumption time bomb is ticking with the World Bank forecasting a 47% increase in packaging by 2025. Once GDP per capita reaches approximately $10,000 US per annum (ie, middle class by global standards) then the markets for and units of packaging escalate dramatically.

All of this has profound implications for supply chains, Australian policy settings, infrastructure needs domestically and packaging recovery systems. International markets will trend towards cleaner high-value streams through source separation and new technologies and force local reprocessing of contaminated streams. Ultimately, resource scarcity and prices will force packaging to be designed to be made again, because resources will be too expensive for one-time use. This will require systems thinking by governments and industry. Industry consolidation and much closer integration of recovery, recycling and packaging companies and government mandated systems will be needed. ACOR will continue to lead the recycling industry and advise governments on these transformations.

*Grant Musgrove is the CEO of ACOR, a national advocacy body for the resource recovery and recycling industry. ACOR represents approximately 40 organisations nationally in both the public and private sectors.