Brian Lodge, design manager at Berry Global and Lee Metters, group business development director at Domino Printing Sciences, consider designing for sustainability, including the effective use of plastics
Consumer demand for environmentally friendly products and packaging is on the rise and has become characterised as ‘the war on plastics’. This, however, dismisses the many advantages of plastics packaging, and ignores the fact that with the right material selection, design, and end-of-life approach plastics can be one of the most environmentally friendly materials used in packaging.
There are certain risks involved in changing how a product is packaged and for many manufacturers plastics are the only viable packaging solution, from both a practical and environmental perspective.
The war on plastics
In the 1940s, when plastics packaging first made its way onto supermarket shelves, it was touted for its many wonderful benefits – lightweight, cheap, and with excellent barrier properties, plastics enabled food to be processed, packed, and transported with ease, increasing the variety of produce available for the general population.
The benefits of plastics packaging were endless. Fast forward to the present day, however, and consumer perceptions of plastics and their usage are not as positive. Nowadays, issues with plastics packaging recycling and disposal have meant that images of whales wrapped in fishing nets, sea turtles tangled in plastics bags, or remote islands littered with plastics scrap are only too familiar.
Many brands are now facing increasing media and consumer pressure to move away from plastics packaging and explore what consumers believe are more environmentally friendly options. But is shunning plastics packaging really the answer?
The risk of change
If manufacturers are currently using plastics as a packaging material, switching to an alternative can be problematic – both from an environmental and practical point of view.
Early last year, a cross-parliamentary group in the UK warned that consumer pressure to end plastics packaging in shops could actually be harming the environment, as many materials that are deemed more sustainable actually come with a more damaging environmental footprint. For example, glass, while fully and widely recyclable, is much heavier than plastics, and therefore more polluting to transport.
From a practical perspective, changing how a product is packaged can also pose significant risks for manufacturers. Even small changes can have a knock-on effect on production processes. An often-forgotten consideration is ensuring that the new material can be reliably and legibly coded with machine- or human-readable codes that last the required life of a product without impacting its recyclability.
Are we losing sight of the benefits of plastics packaging?
Any attempt to understand and solve the plastics problem needs to look at the benefits of plastics packaging as well as its drawbacks. In Europe alone, 24.7 million tonnes of plastics packaging were produced in 2018.
The reason for this high figure is that plastics provide unparalleled advantages as a packaging material: plastics are lightweight – 87 per cent lighter than an average glass wine bottle, reducing shipping costs and increasing customer usability; plastics are resource-efficient – virgin plastics production uses about half as much energy as alternative materials, and, despite being a by-product of the oil industry, uses only 4 per cent of global oil production; plastics are cheap to produce – allowing for products to be packaged and distributed without incurring a significant cost to the consumer; and plastics are excellent barrier materials – using plastics to package food can extend shelf life during transportation and storage, helping to reduce food waste.
This final point is perhaps the most important when considering the advantages of plastics packaging. Globally, emissions resulting from food waste contribute 3.3 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year – if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter after China and the US.
Global food supply chains are complex networks, with fresh foods transported significant distances, and going through multiple hands before they reach the consumer. Extending shelf life and protecting the food during transportation is, therefore, imperative, which is why such significant investment is made in the selection of materials and the design of packaging.
Utilising a very small amount of plastics goes a long way into extending the shelf life of fresh food, reducing overall emissions from wastage. Research has shown that just 1.5g of plastics wrapping can extend the life of a cucumber by 11 days and a steak by 10 days, while utilising plastics bags can protect loose produce, such as potatoes, to reduce wastage by up to two thirds.
Today, plastics packaging is deeply entrenched in globalised supply chains for food, beverage, and household and consumer products alike. Funding, sourcing, and implanting viable alternatives while continuing to meet consumer demand is an exceptionally complex task. As a result, demand for plastics continues to grow at a rate that could see global plastics waste volumes increase from 260 million tonnes in 2016 to 460m/t by 2030.
Promoting a circular economy for plastics packaging recycling
To properly address this issue requires careful consideration of the design, use, disposal, and collection of plastics.
Globally, plastics packaging recycling rates are exceptionally low – it is estimated that in 2015 just 20 per cent of all plastics waste was recycled – but if plastics demand is on the rise, end-of-life plastics should be considered a resource, not a waste product. Steps need to be taken to ensure that we can capture, recover, and reuse all plastics at end of life rather than allowing them to build up in landfill or the natural environment.
In 2018 the Ellen Macarthur Foundation – in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme – launched The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment to encourage brands and organisations to work together to form a ‘circular economy’ for plastics. The commitment brings together key stakeholders from more than 400 organisations, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, Veolia, and Walmart, to completely rethink and redesign the future of plastics.
Across the globe, work is also taking place in the petrochemical industry to support the move to a circular economy. This includes work to increase the quality of post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics, as well as research into chemical recycling.
Unlike mechanical recycling, where plastics is melted down and reformed, chemical recycling works on the basis of taking plastics polymers back to their original feedstock. For many, chemical recycling is a key factor in completely closing the gap in the plastics chain.
Moving towards a circular economy for plastics requires greater efforts and cooperation between governments and key players across the plastics industry to standardise materials and recycling systems. This includes not just plastics producers and recyclers, but also brand owners, manufacturers, and retailers.
There are five key things organisations can do to help boost their sustainability credentials, and help tackle the plastics waste issue.
Evaluate packaging components
Can you make changes to your packaging to use less material, remove unnecessary components, or aid recyclability without compromising product integrity?
Currently, over-packaging is an issue, and there is a problem with packaging design using too many layers and too many components. Reducing the weight of the material to the point where it still does its job is essential to minimise waste.
Packaging made from multiple components can cause problems when it comes to recycling, particularly when non-recyclable components are tightly bonded to recyclable materials, making them difficult for consumers to remove, and meaning they contaminate recycling streams.
Take a lifecycle approach to packaging design
Today, there are many lifecycle assessment (LCA) tools and consultancies available to help illustrate the environmental impacts represented by different packaging options.
Before choosing a tool, you need to be clear on which processes in the product’s lifecycle you want to include in the LCA. It’s also important to bear in mind that different tools use different metrics and so may yield slightly different results. The key is to be consistent and ensure you are making progress in the areas that are of greatest concern to your company.
Think about space-saving
Space-saving is crucial to product design and sustainability, as transport costs make a significant contribution to a product’s overall environmental footprint.
Designing products that can easily and effectively slot together, reducing unnecessary components and lightweighting packaging all go some way to assist with this.
Increase post-consumer recycled content where possible
The ultimate goal of a circular economy is to get towards utilising 100 per cent recycled content, but the plastics industry is still a long way off being able to deliver on this in practice.
Mechanical recycling of plastics presents barriers to achieving 100 per cent recycled content. It also comes at a cost – PCR is more expensive than virgin materials, purely because it is scarce and in high demand. A mix of virgin materials and PCR is a viable packaging solution, and is one of the main ways of demonstrating your brand’s commitment to sustainable plastics.
Design for recyclability
In theory all plastics are recyclable, but in practice, due to limitations with recycling facilities, and issues with separating multi-layer materials, very few actually are.
There are three basic rules to follow when designing for recyclability: use mono-materials – multi-layer plastics are difficult to recycle, and most household recycling schemes don’t recover them; use natural plastics rather than coloured – the addition of colour causes greying in the recycling stream; coloured plastics also have a lower resell value and is therefore less attractive to commercial recycling services; and use widely recycled materials such as PET, polyethylene, and polypropylene rather than less widely recycled items such as polystyrene, PVC, and ABS.
Creating a pure stream of plastics waste for recycling will improve the overall quality of PCR, which means that companies will be able to utilise a higher percentage of PCR in new products. It will also increase the volume of recycled material used to generate new products, bringing down the cost of recycled content.
A major part of the sustainability agenda
For some, a switch away from plastics is neither possible nor desirable – the good news is that plastics packaging can still be a major part of the sustainability agenda.
If organisations are currently using plastics as a packaging material, it is important to understand the available options and determine the right solution to individual needs.
Developments into new and improved plastics packaging are likely to continue for several years to come, and coding and marking technologies need to evolve alongside. Some of the risks involved in designing for sustainability are already being addressed by the development of laser- and ink-coding solutions for new packaging solutions – including recycled, recyclable, and bio-based plastics packaging.
It is through a collective effort on understanding the viability of all packaging substrates, including plastics, that we will be able to address the global sustainability agenda.
