By some accounts, up to 80% of plastic leakage into the ocean comes from plastics.<\/p>\n
Small format flexible plastic packaging for food and daily items is both cheap and easy to use, but it pollutes the oceans too.<\/p>\n
Laura Smith, programme lead, plastics, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, claimed every second 25,000 items of flexible packaging enters the ocean, and so it was important to use more widely recycled material.<\/p>\n
Pablo Costa, global head of packaging, digital & transformation, Unilever, said there is a big problem for flexible packaging: \u201cOn one side, it provides consumers, with fresh, quality, safe, essential goods for daily life. But as we know, the problem is this packaging is hard to recycle and hard to collect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Developing markets
He said visiting Asia\u2019s developing markets (South Asia, South East Asia, Indonesia, Thailand etc), it was \u2018clear how important\u2019 small flexible packaging is.<\/p>\n
\u201cA large part of our customer base cannot afford anything other than these small formats.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the collection and recycling is the problem.<\/p>\n
While paper can play a central role in moving away from plastics, he warned: \u201cPaper by itself is not the whole solution. We need more than paper. This is a big challenge, it needs a solution, we are making very good progress. Paper will be part of the solution, but not the whole solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christiane Waldron, senior director global sustainability strategy, PepsiCo, said the multinational has an ambitious goal of \u2018packaging never becoming waste\u2019, and there should be more emphasis on reduce and reuse: \u201cObviously, on the reduce, if you transition some of our brands or some of our packaging from plastic to paper, with plastic on, that\u2019s going to be very helpful. Obviously, now there is a push, that consumers view paper as better, and they like to see paper, and we always look for innovative solutions at Pepsico.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said while there has been a \u2018tremendous push more recently\u2019, at the same time, a lot more was needed in primary packaging: \u201cWe want to see a drive towards alternative materials.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waldron pointed out that brands have used flexible films and plastics for a really long time and it certainly does its job as far as keeping food fresh \u2013 \u2018plastic conserves the quality and hygiene\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if all of us threw ourselves into paper, we\u2019re going to have a problem. It\u2019s not an infinite solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cInherently, when you put something into a package that needs to have a shelf life, it needs to last a long time. And right now, we need more innovation. I\u2019m astonished with the amount of innovation that\u2019s happened in the last five years. It\u2019s tremendous. but we need more, not just on the paper sub-stream. We need more coatings. We need more machinery because the machinery, unfortunately, has been designed to basically work with plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said more on the entire value chain needs to be done, collaboratively with various brands, to pick up the speed to get to paper flex in primary packaging that has a functionality that is needed.<\/p>\n
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Worldwide format challenges
Unilever\u2019s Costa said one of the things to accept is paper by itself is not going to be a solution because it doesn\u2019t work for everything, when trying to find a solution to plastic for flexible packaging.<\/p>\n
He said the company has 60 material scientists looking for solutions to replace plastic where possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at different markets packaging sits and moves differently before arriving to consumers. In Asia often the packaging is widely small format and often hanging outside shops and has been moved by hand many times. It will be exposed to the elements and has to survive. Paper does not always give you the protection that you need.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, he explained, is why it is important to look for solutions that give the performance needed as well as the protection and also solves the end of life to address the problem we face today with packaging.<\/p>\n
Smith from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation asked how important collaboration was across brands.<\/p>\n
Costa said while brands such a Unilever are big, they are not big enough to solve this alone, and that collaboration with the end-to-end value chain, channel partners, suppliers, small companies, start-ups, academia etc was crucial.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one risk we should avoid is fragmentation. If different companies are coming up with different solutions, you end up with very fragmented sort of solutions that will not allow us to get to scale to make transitions successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Expertise in collaboration
Waldron said she agreed: \u201cRemember we are not packaging experts. We are a foods company and a beverage company. So we need all the resources we can get and we need to collaborate, we need the entire industry to push forward. We all understand the sustainability will move forward, regardless of what happens.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the push forward is not just on PepsiCo or Unilever but on all of us, including the recyclers, the people that are planting trees, the people that are making paper. And if we all move towards the same goal, we can solve a lot problems, and that\u2019s the reality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith said it was clear that paper can play a very important role in tackling small format flexible plastic packaging.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also know that to get there, that\u2019s really tricky. And expensive and requires huge scale. And something the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is closely looking at is how do we realise that scale? How do you bring the right people together to actually make this a reality and go from talking about it, to actually seeing this packaging on the market.\u201d<\/p>\n