No one wants to “waste” anything; whether it’s time, money or the leftovers of a product we’ve purchased. Brands of course want consumers to have a positive experience with a product throughout the time they spend with it. When a consumer has to toss a product’s packaging into the trash, rather than recycling or composting it, that act may give a negative impression the company likely does not intend. To improve a company’s environmental impact while improving the consumer’s brand experience, companies are increasingly tackling the challenges around packaging and waste.

There are multiple paths to divert packaging waste from landfills—through reuse, recycling, composting, incineration or digestion with capabilities to capture energy. Recycling is a familiar option. Composting is another option, for diverting both packaging and food waste. Ultimately, the most appropriate packaging waste diversion tactic for a company should consider several factors, including packaging functionality, available recovery infrastructure and value of the solution.

Let’s explore some of the opportunities and challenges related specifically to composting:

Cost: First and foremost, a package must be intentionally designed to fulfill a task that adds value, such as protecting a product, enabling portability or communicating important messages. Likewise, the design stage is when a package will be designed to enable compostability through choices such as materials and thickness. Brands must be prepared to pay for this packaging attribute, though. Often compostable packaging incurs higher costs compared to a standard packaging. Added costs may come from materials, testing, additional resources or necessary certifications.

Performance: There may also be limitations on materials available that meet performance needs in a compostable material offering. To be sure, innovations in this space have improved the situation over time, but additional opportunities exist to bring more solutions to market.

Infrastructure: The infrastructure for commercial composting in the U.S. is still in its infancy, but many stakeholders are interested in fostering its growth. One opportunity that could fuel these advancements is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) goal to reduce food waste nationally by 50% by 2030 from the 2010 baseline. Composting is one means to reduce food waste. Thus, progress towards this goal could result in improvements in composting infrastructure resources, availability and viability.

However, where composting infrastructure exists, compostable packaging is not always accepted into the program. Thus, it is important for the industry to stay engaged to make the case for composters to accept compostable packaging.

For example, GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition is engaging in research to uncover the impact that compostable packaging has in increasing diversion of food scraps. If a meaningful amount of additional food is captured when compostable food packaging is used, this could create a more convincing case for using compostable packaging.

To read full story, visit http://www.packagingdigest.com/sustainable-packaging/breaking-down-the-value-of-compostable-packaging-2016-10-19.

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