Sustainability means many things to many people.  While environmental considerations are obviously important, they must be thought of alongside socio-economic, cultural and at times political considerations as well.  Here is a straightforward definition of sustainable packaging that reflects this holistic view:

“Sustainable packaging delivers the full value of the product contained within, and does so with the least amount of negative economic, environmental and social impact throughout its life cycle.”

When the full life cycle of a product and its packaging is considered (from material extraction through to disposal), packaging represents only about 5-10% of the total environmental impacts.  A critical role of packaging is to protect the product, and help prevent the higher impacts associated with product loss.  For example, non-recyclable plastic packaging on our food can be frustrating and seem unnecessary, but if the cucumber or ground beef goes bad, the environmental impacts are far greater than those generated by the packaging.  So, we need to be careful as we eliminate and reduce packaging, and avoid being ‘penny wise, pound foolish.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle took root after the first Earth Day in 1970, and is echoed fifty years later in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2021 Guide to Packaging Solutions’ hierarchy of elimination, reuse, and material circulation.  Circular Economy thinkers have expanded the 3 Rs, to include important practices such as refuse, repair and remanufacture.  A good starting point question: How can one reduce material and energy needs while maintaining package functionality?  Reductions in these areas mean reductions in key impact categories like greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing toxicity and contaminants is also a priority.  We can often apply multiple ‘Rs’. For example, applied in the right situation a reusable packaging solution may be the best way to reduce overall environmental impacts.  The best single-use packaging solution is often one that has maximized reduction, and then applied best practices for inclusion of recycled content, and design for recyclability.

Consumers often link attributes of ‘recyclable’ or ‘compostable’ with increased sustainability.  Unfortunately, these are often not reliable indicators of reduced environmental impacts.  These particular attributes refer to what one does with the package upon disposal — recycle it or compost it.  However, the majority of environmental impacts of single-use packaging are in the material extraction, package manufacturing and transportation stages.  So, a steel canister used to package coffee may be recyclable, but it requires a lot of material and is heavy. While the can may be recycled, it has much higher environmental impacts — including greenhouse gas emissions — than a non-recyclable pouch used for the same amount of coffee.  

Bioplastics is a complicated field which includes compostable plastic packaging.  While this type of packaging may intuitively appear more sustainable, it presents a number of challenges.  First of all, compostable plastic packaging may have higher impacts than conventional materials.  A main reason is that renewable sources often rely on industrial agricultural processes, which themselves require fossil fuels and energy to produce, as does the manufacturing of the packaging itself.  Further, consumers are often confused as to how to dispose of compostable plastic packaging, so it ends up in all three streams: organics, recycling, and garbage.  This creates problems, and regardless, virtually all this type of packaging in Canada is removed and sent to landfill, where it has a good chance of generating methane, a potent greenhouse gas.  Claims like ‘compostable’ or ‘biodegradable’ have little meaning unless they are substantiated by a valid certification, such as BPI or BNQ.

An important finding of a 2021 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Report is that ‘single-use’ is more problematic than ‘plastic’ when considering single-use plastics.  There is no question that we have major problems associated with plastic packaging leaking into our environment, which must be addressed.  However, before we rush to ‘break free from plastic’, it’s important to recognize that in many applications (well beyond packaging) plastic provides major environmental impact reductions when compared with alternatives.  This point reinforces the idea of going ‘upstream’, in order to identify the best solutions that reduce material and energy use, as well as human and ecosystem toxicity and degradation.