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SPS 2011: Preparing for the 'Perfect Storm'

SPS 2011 focuses on the impending threat of global resource scarcity and how CPGs can employ sustainable packaging innovation to drive future business success.

Pw 2090 Speck

A unique new forum was born on the cusp of spring at the first annual Sustainable Packaging Symposium 2011: Advancing the Greener Supply Chain held in Chicago March 16-18. The result of a partnership between Greener Package and the Institute for Sustainability (IfS), a technological community of the American Institute for Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the event drew more than 220 attendees from many sectors of the packaging supply chain.

Through compelling presentations, including three keynotes, conducted by notable consumer packaged goods companies, academia, and industry associations, the sustainable packaging discourse homed in on very real future challenges related to resource scarcity and addressed tools and solutions for businesses to meet these threats through optimized packaging.

Setting the stage on day one, Marks & Spencer packaging buyer Andrew Speck provided a keynote that outlined a chilling forecast for the future. Citing the U.K.’s recent Foresight report, titled “Global Food and Farming Futures” (see http://bit.ly/dEgQKR), he said, “We are entering a time where our generations will be approaching the ‘perfect storm.’ This is about growing populations, falling energy sources, and food shortages coming together within the same time scales to create a perfect storm by 2030.

Speck reported that predictions show the global population rising to 9 billion by 2050—with most of the growth coming from Africa and Asia. The availability of water, which also affects farming, is also under threat, with scarcity in some areas already occurring.

“What does this have to do with packaging?” Speck asked attendees. “Simplistically, the challenge for the future for our business is how to feed more people from the same amount of land using half the amount of energy. The perfect storm must drive sustainable packaging solutions.”

With this challenge articulated, SPS 2011 centered on solutions through sustainable packaging innovation. Said speaker Tony Kingsbury, executive-in-residence, Center for Responsible Business, UC Berkeley, and an executive for Dow Chemical, who reiterated Speck’s predictions, “Innovation happens when resources are scarce.”

Kingsbury, one of several speakers to energize audience members with his insightful comments on day one, provided predictions for the future related to packaging. Kingsbury’s most cited prediction throughout the event was that “keeping the molecule in play will gain momentum.”

“We can’t continue to bury or litter our plastic molecules, not bury our steel or aluminum or paper,” he warned. “Keep the molecules in play by recycling them, or at least if you don’t recycle them, get the energy value out of them, instead of burying them where we are going to be criticized by our grandchildren for putting them in a big hole.”

With another prediction, Kingsbury laid the groundwork for day two’s discussion on the measurements, data, and analysis used for calculating sustainability, saying, “Life-cycle data will increasingly drive materials decision making because it helps us to understand the resources. It also help us to understand the societal implications.”

Conversation focuses on recycling

Proving that the sustainable packaging conversation has shifted from compostability to recycling (see greenerpackage.com/node/3641) as the most efficient way to “keep the molecule in play,” speakers including Speck, Scott Vitters, general manager of the PlantBottle Packaging Platform for The Coca-Cola Co., and Jim Hanna, director of Environmental Impact for Starbucks Coffee, described how their companies are creating strategies to support the growth and viability of recycling.

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