The Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), a packaging industry trade group, published in April 2022 a guide to help move packaging stakeholders towards more renewable packaging systems. The guidance for renewable packaging reviews common assumptions around reusable packaging, defines some of the different systems such as refillable or returnable, and outlines best practices and ways to measure success. ChemFORWARD also published a plastic additive optimization tool that enables users to check the chemical hazard profile of over 1100 plastic additives to find the safest option for a particular function.
In the renewable packaging guide, SPC focuses on strategies and metrics based on “reducing the environmental footprint of the package-product system” as a whole. To do this, SPC thinks companies should “analyze return and refill rates as an indicator of reuse in practice. This is different from metrics of theoretical reuse which many brands inadvertently focus on, such as how many uses reusable packaging is designed to withstand or when it would break even.”
SPC defines reusable packaging as packaging that (i) allows a buyer to put the same type of product back into the original packaging, (ii) is designed to be returnable and/or refillable, (iii) is free of chemicals of concern, and (iv) reaches a minimum number of reuses by being part of an established reuse system.
Reuse systems tend to have more upfront costs, both environmentally and monetarily, “but with all subsequent uses, reusable packaging bypasses the material extraction and manufacturing phases, and the initial impacts are spread out over the number of uses,” SPC stated. Upstream reported in July 2021 that over the expected lifetime of reusable food service ware, packaging, and other products greenhouse gas emissions are lower compared to single-use products. In addition, “100% of the 121 businesses and 11 institutional dining programs that have documented the cost impacts of switching from single-use to reusable saved money, accounting for the costs of new products, labor, and increased dishwashing” (FPF reported).
The Plastic Additive Optimization Tool was a joint project between SPC and ChemFORWARD. The tool is free after users register. It “enables users to check the chemical hazard profile of over 1100 different additives used in plastics.” Additives are graded from A (safe) to F (unsafe) by combining information form the UN Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of classification and labeling of chemicals, the Cradle to Cradle Certified products methodology, GreenScreen, and the US EPA Safer Chemicals Ingredients List. Additives graded A to C are considered generally safer alternatives.
The programs that SPC and ChemFORWARD built upon for the tool have continued making improvements. GreenScreen launched a certification for single-use food service ware in November 2021 (FPF reported), and the EPA Safer Chemical Ingredients List was updated in March 2022 (FPF reported). In July 2021, Helene Wiesinger and co-authors identified over 10,000 additives used in plastics and categorized 24% of the identified chemicals as “substances of potential concern” based on the persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity criteria in the EU (FPF reported). More than half of these substances of concern are not included in regulations from the US, EU, or Japan.
References
Kachook, O. et al. (2022). “Guidance for reusable packaging: Understanding goals and assumptions in order to design a more successful reusable packaging program.” SPC (pdf)
ChemFORWARD (2022). “Safe + Circular Plastic additive optimization tool.”
Read more
Olga Kachook (April 12, 2022). “New Reusable Packaging Guidance Explores Assumptions and Metrics for Success.” SPC
SPC (April 14, 2022). “ChemFORWARD and SPC offer plastic producers free access to chemical additive safety tool.”
Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (February 2022). “Material Health Assessment Methodology.”
Marcel Howard (April 22, 2022). “Climate, plastics and reuse.” Upstream
