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专家的3个关于圆形包装的观察

如果您是品牌,包装生产商,或者基本上是经济中的其他任何人,请不要在包装上睡觉。

在棕色咖啡杯上,带有黑色写作,上面写着:“这个杯子是100%可生物降解且可堆肥的”“>
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堆肥设施不断地应对双重挑战separating contaminants从有机材料和有利可图。Image via Shutterstock/VTT Studio.

Everyone who participates in the modern economy understands that packaging needs to be improved, right?

Honestly, I get frustrated when it takes 10 minutes to get a kid’s toy out of the package. After extraction, I have the pleasure of scrutinizing every component to see if it’s recyclable (note: If I have to examine, it’s usually not recyclable). I don’t even want to think about what the average consumer does with toy packaging. I’m sure it’s horrifying.

Then there are people like the other 600 attendees at the可持续包装联盟(SPC)影响会议,本月初在旧金山举行。这群人了解包装。他们知道为什么一瓶止痛药在盒子里出售,即使瓶子保护了物品,他们知道为什么我刚刚订购的尿布盒子放在另一个盒子里,围绕着它包裹着空气枕头(只是开玩笑,没有人知道这个. It’s bonkers).

最大的包装公司和消费者品牌(包括来自联合利华,火星和韦斯特罗克的人们,仅举几例),下降到旧金山谈论包装,我很幸运能和他们在一起。我希望从他们的深入知识中学习,并了解可能导致我们走向更循环未来的解决方案。在大多数情况下,我得到了我所希望的。当我在会议上反思我的时间时,我想打开三分:

  1. The nexus of food waste and packaging is key to our future
  2. Recycling and composting are both improving, but have a ways to go
  3. 包装在对抗气候变化的斗争中起着重要作用

全球食物浪费挑战是真实的

According toReFED在美国,大约35%的食物(近8000万吨)每年未售出或未加入。大多数食物变成垃圾,焚化,被焚化,被冲入排水管或剩下的田野腐烂。显然,保持食物新鲜的包装解决方案可以减少系统中的总体废物。

不过,在此讨论中,很容易看到房间中的一些不适,因为保持食物新鲜的更健壮的包装通常会对可回收性产生负面影响,并且可以增加所使用的包装量和相关的环境影响。显然,在这个地方,该行业看到了一个创新机会来解决权衡并开发新解决方案的机会。

“包装和食物浪费通常被认为是二进制选择 - 要么包装食物以延长保质期和防止食物浪费,要么被销售松散,这被认为会导致食物浪费,”生物经济学总监Olga Kachook说。GreenBlue的重用计划。“现实更为复杂,因为即使产品包装并设计为具有延长的保质期,也可能发生食物浪费。”

8 images from main stage conversations on left; white writing that reads 'SPC Impact 2022' on blue background“>
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Courtesy of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition.

一家创新的公司减少食物浪费的公司,不完美的食物,正在解决一些循环经济问题。betway必威体育手机版他们以通过销售精心策划的杂货的模型来减少食物浪费而闻名,这些杂货有点不完美,否则不会出售商店。这是一项很酷的服务,我很喜欢自己。

不完美的食物故事与SPC撞击重叠的地方在其包装中。如您所料,全国品牌运输食品需要密封的盒子,保护包装和冷包。在过去的几年中,不完美的食物已经竭尽全力,可以通过使大部分包装可返回和重复使用,以解决客户的重大烦恼,其余的则可以轻松回收。因为他们自己交付了产品,所以他们能够在下一次交付期间收集包装,因此可以对其进行消毒和重复使用。

Solutions for recycling and composting

Recycling and composting alone will not build the circular economy, but you can’t build a circular economy without them. It is clear from SPC Impact that the packaging industry knows this. Let’s quickly touch on three points that I heard at the conference.

  1. Mechanical recycling is very much part of the solution today, and is likely to be for quite some time. The focus is on better collection and separation technologies through innovations such asdigital watermarks,artificial intelligenceand robotic sorting. This will make the output of the mechanical recycling process higher quality and usable in more applications.
  2. 高级回收方法(例如净化,转换和分解)是一个新兴的领域,但现在不进行扩展以满足需求。PrintPack的产品管理工程师克里斯蒂娜·博伊德(Christina Boyd)对该领域有一些很好的见解,以及拆除误解(高级回收作为单片)并为未来建立这个空间的重要性。
  3. 堆肥设施不断地应对双重挑战separating contaminants从有机材料和有利可图。堆肥空间中的主要参与者开始在其设施中使用AI和机器人技术,并取得了巨大的成功。Atlas Organics, for example, is employing robots in its San Antonio facility and is confident it’ll be able to get to less than 1 percent contamination over time.

Greenblue执行董事Nina Goodrich正在考虑在一个难以改进的领域的上游。她说:“我认为重点首先需要收集。我们真的很擅长收集大多数材料。”“从政策到激励措施可能需要各种干预措施。”

Goodrich补充说,回收技术需要考虑包装和其他废物流。她说:“化学回收有能力解锁新的溪流,一旦将它们化学回到构件中,它们就可以成为各种材料的新原料。”

SPC总监Karen Hagerman补充说:“整个价值链中都有如此出色而创新的作品,但是重点问题确实是将这些点连接起来,并利用集体的能量和主动性来改变系统,以便所有部分都可以同时扩展。”

Packaging and climate change

While packaging accounts for only a slice of total carbon emissions, there is an acknowledgement within the sector that packaging can have indirect carbon impacts in other sectors and that steps can be taken to decrease the impact further. Peter Spiller, partner at McKinsey, and Ruth Maust, project manager at GreenBlue, addressed these impacts in their decarbonization session. They discussed actions packaging players can take to better serve their customers and how innovation in packaging can help cut greenhouse gas emissions from a number of sectors. They also touched on how reducing packaging waste and use of smart packaging can reduce the impacts of the sector.

包装是消费者与您的品牌的首次互动。即使对公司的环境足迹的总体影响很小,也不要忽视这一点。

The main stage on day one of Impact also featured conversations on carbon. While not all of these presentations were directly related to packaging, the industry could find inspiration and a call to action in the discussions. If participants connected the dots between talks by Justin Freiberg, managing director at Yale Carbon Containment Lab, Matthew Realff, professor at Georgia Tech, and Freya Burton, chief sustainability officer at LanzaTech, they could start to think about how next generation packaging could be manufactured using "waste" carbon feedstocks captured directly from the air.

The team at GreenBlue agrees that climate change and waste reduction should be at the forefront of packaging innovation, and that they can go hand-in-hand. Goodrich made this clear when I asked about carbon emissions. "I would ask, why do we recycle? Why do we want circularity?" she said. "I hope it is because we want to reduce our carbon footprint. I understand there are other valuable reasons but the north star should be carbon."

In fact, GreenBlue’s recently published report,Guidance for Reusable Packaging, makes this argument clearly. Corporate sustainability goals should not be siloed, and efforts towards waste reduction and reuse should be integrally linked to carbon emissions reduction.

In summary

As David Eichberg, global head of climate strategy at HP, said on the main stage at Impact, "Packaging is a consumer’s first interaction with your brand. Don’t overlook that even if it is a small overall impact on your company’s environmental footprint."

如果您是品牌,包装生产商,或者基本上是经济中的其他任何人,请不要在包装上睡觉。A lot of folks out there are working to innovate in the space and those innovations are needed and overdue.

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Jon Smieja

副总裁,圆形和高级分析师
GreenBiz Group

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