Month: May 2023

There are four paths a package can take after serving its useful purpose: landfill/litter, composting, energy recovery/incineration, or recycling. While a recyclability claim is commonly associated with what makes a package sustainable, recycling is just one part of a complex ecosystem that depends on a variety of factors including geography, consumer behavior, collection processes, sorting processes, equipment, and profitability.

Packaging recyclability claims that are unsubstantiated or misleading create risk ranging from consumer complaints and negative social media chatter to class action lawsuits and fines from governmental organizations. They can also lead to a weakening of the recycling infrastructure, a circumstance the global circular economy simply can’t afford.

Getting recyclability claims right is easier than you think — but it pays to follow the rules. Here are some things you need to know:

Criteria for 100% Recyclable

To be considered 100% recyclable, SEE® (formerly Sealed Air) believes packaging material or solutions must meet this criteria:

1. Can be collected at curbside or drop-off by at least 60% of the population 

Whether it’s picked up at the curbside or taken by the consumer to a drop-off location, collection is the first step to recycling. Recycling systems vary greatly in terms of what they will take based on everything from the sorting equipment available at the material recovery facility (MRF) they work with, how much labor they are able to employ to pick up bins or sort by hand, and even the market price for bales of collected material to off-set the cost of sorting.

Most municipal recycling programs publish the types of materials they accept either as part of customer agreements, printed guides, or on their websites. Based on a variety of factors, these rules can change from time to time — restricted items may still leave the curb, but unknowingly to the consumer, it will end up in the landfill.

All this is to say, that regardless of the material type, it becomes the responsibility of the consumer to check the rules that govern the program in which they participate, as well as to follow guidelines provided by standardized labels such as How2Recycle in the U.S., On-Pack Recycling Labels in the U.K, or the Australasian Recycling Labels in Australia and New Zealand.

While similar to some degree, labels and rules vary around the world and aren’t always easy to understand at a glance. That’s a lot for consumers to keep up with — and it’s one of the biggest reasons we encounter aspirational recycling — when consumers knowingly put something in the bin they may be unsure about and simply hope it gets recycled.

2. Can be sorted by the material recovery facility to which it is sent

Now that most municipal recycling programs offer mixed-stream recycling where paper, glass, metals, and plastics are collected in one bin, MRFs take on the critical role of sorting before items can move on to the actual recycling process.

Because the volume of waste can be high and the time to sort is so short, most modern MRFs automate the sorting process as much as possible with high-speed conveyors and screens, optical sorters, and robotics.

While that’s great news for packaging made of paper, metal, or glass, the “need for speed” presents a particular challenge for plastic. Plastics that often look and weigh the same, may be constructed completed differently, so how they react during different stages of the sorting process will also vary.

To keep things simple and to protect the integrity of their recycling streams, most MRFs limit the types of plastic they accept, and only through improvement of the recycling infrastructure is that likely to change.

3. Can be recycled into a commercially viable product

Recycling is the process through which materials are returned to some type of useful, marketable material. While there can be many ways to accomplish this task, two are of the most relevance to packaging: mechanical recycling and advanced recycling.

Mechanical recycling refers to operations that use processes such as grinding, washing, separating, drying, granulating, and compounding as the means to create recycled materials. For plastics, while mechanical recycling preserves the molecular structure, in some cases the recycled material does not possess the same functional properties as the original.

This results in downcycling, or the need to use the recycled material in a different or lower-value application. Examples of downcycling include PET water bottles that are recycled into pellets used to make carpeting or synthetic fleece fibers; used printer or photocopy paper being recycled into corrugated cardboard; or glass containers that are recycled into fiberglass insulation or used as additives in concrete or ceramic tiles.

Where plastics are concerned, the highest volume of mechanically recycled packaging materials are standard formats such as PET bottles for water and soft drinks, and HDPE jugs for milk and juice. Beyond those applications, there is no standard for what type of resin can be used, so it becomes more challenging for recyclers to identify and separate plastics to keep recycling streams pure.

Maintaining the quality and integrity of recycling streams is critical to marketability and therefore profitability. Without market demand, reasonable margins, or affordable pricing for recycled materials and the applications that use them, the entire recycling system will fail.

Complexity of the Plastic Recycling Ecosystem

With a start as early as the 1960s, municipal recycling programs as we know them today didn’t really gain scale until the 1990s. During that same period, plastic packaging changed dramatically as well, moving from the easier-to-identify-and-recycle rigid plastics like PET(E) and HDPE to include a broad range of performance plastics such as flexible LDPE films, PVC, PP, or PS.

In 1988, about the time municipal recycling programs began to gain scale, the Plastics Industry Association (formerly Society of the Plastics Industry) developed resin identification codes (RIC) to “provide a consistent national system to facilitate recycling of post-consumer plastics.”

When first introduced, RIC symbols featured the universally recognized recycling symbol known as the “chasing arrows” to contain the resin type identification number. And, while those chasing arrows were intended only to facilitate the sorting process prior to recycling, the general public misinterpreted the symbols and began associating them directly with recyclability.

Currently, ASTM International maintains upkeep of the RIC graphic standards. While they officially replaced the chasing arrows with a solid triangle in 2013, following these standards remains voluntary, and use of the chasing arrows remains prevalent. For packaging in particular, keeping up with changing voluntary standards can be challenging — as the replacement of a die or injection mold is often determined to be cost prohibitive for such a small change.

Because RICs were never developed with brand owners or consumers in mind, claiming recyclability based on RIC alone is not enough. In today’s environment, regardless of the material type, it becomes the responsibility of the consumer to check the rules that govern the program in which they participate.

That’s why SEE® recommends use of standardized labels such as How2Recycle in the U.S., On-Pack Recycling Labels in the U.K, or the Australasian Recycling Labels in Australia and New Zealand.

And it’s also why SEE® takes the position that when it comes to recycling plastic packaging, the proper instruction to consumers always starts with “check locally.”

Innovation and Infrastructure

For more than 20 years until 2018, China accepted nearly half of the world’s recyclable waste, including 95% of the plastics collected in the E.U and 70% from the U.S. But when quality problems and contamination of their recycled materials caused a significant decline in market value, China instituted National Sword, a policy that banned the import of most plastics and other materials headed for their recycling processors.

Prior to 2018, as the use and development of flexible plastic packaging skyrocketed, governments worried little about the need to build their own infrastructure to recycle it. At the same time, most consumers had no idea that the materials they put out at the curb eventually went overseas.

The good news is countries and municipalities that may have once relied on exporting recyclables to China are now investing in and enhancing their own infrastructure. For example:

Research conducted by the Materials Recovery for the Future project in 2020 showed that state-of-the-art optical sorting and peripheral systems are significantly improving the capture rate and quality of recycled flexible plastic packaging.

Advanced recycling, also called chemical recycling, uses pyrolysis to create plastic with performance properties equal to virgin plastics that can be used for the same application from which they came — such as fresh food packaging.

Industry associations are conducting initiatives focused on improving the process of recycling PE films, recycling post-industrial food packaging, or using recycled plastic content in products like asphalt.

While these technologies are still in developmental stages, they are part of how SEE® and its related industries are working together to create more and better recycling solutions.

Why SEE® Calls It Recycle-Ready

SEE® defines recyclability as the likelihood that a material will be collected, recycled, and then made into a new, commercially viable product. Given the current state of the recycling ecosystem around the world that’s not as easy or straightforward as it should be.

The company understands that political climate, NGOs, or exchanges on social media often put pressure on an industry for change but SEE® won’t take short cuts that could put the progress it’s made at risk.

The term recyclable has criteria associated with it that SEE® observes to ensure the purity, quality, and market value of its recycling streams. And, while the company will continue to develop and introduce new products with recyclability in mind, it acknowledges the infrastructure may not be ready to accommodate these innovations just yet — so it sends them to market as recycle-ready.

As soon as these materials meet all criteria to be labeled 100% recyclable, SEE® will update the claim.

Originally published on SealedAir.com.

A new Sector Standard for mining from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is under development, which aims to improve the quality of reporting over the sector’s impacts – with a public consultation on the proposed Standard closing at the end of April.  

As this exposure draft recognizes, mining firms can make significant contributions to economic development, especially in lower income nations, if impacts are diligently managed. Yet major environmental and human rights challenges raise questions over the sector’s social license to operate, with concerns over impacts due to the urgent need to secure minerals for the low-carbon transition. To overcome these issues and establish trust, mining companies are expected to identify and address their impacts, within their operations and supply chains, and be transparent about their progress. 

Here we will look at two topics at the top of the agenda for many organizations focused on driving sustainable development in the sector, and explicitly included among 25 likely material topics in the draft Standard. They were also spotlighted in the OECD Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains at the end of April, where GRI  hosted a session.

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM)

ASM is usually informal in nature and is not regarded as a target user group for the future GRI Standard. Yet there are increasing expectations for larger companies to engage with and support legitimate ASM stakeholders. This can include joint efforts to advance ASM formalization, provision of technical assistance, as well as capacity building to prevent critical impacts, such as those related to use of cyanide and mercury, and child labor. 

Natalia Uribe, Standards and Assurance Manager with the Alliance for Responsible Mining, explained:

“The ASM sector represents around 50 million people in over 120 countries – a quarter of them women – generating livelihoods for the most vulnerable group in mineral supply chains. The existence of industrial mining and ASM in the same areas is a reality in many countries, with sometimes inequal access to mining titles. Fair models of coexistence between titleholders and ASM miners is a favorable outcome for both parties, to achieve lasting and fruitful relationships. 

For promoting transparency, accountability and dialogue, it is welcome that GRI’s draft Mining Standard includes consideration of ASM interactions. It is vital to put local development in the center, with the communities and territories respecting their autonomies, traditions, priorities and visions of development.

Having ASM as a likely material topic in the GRI Standard can be a starting point to create linkages with specialized ASM standards, such as CRAFT code and Fairmined Standard, which can serve as tools for companies and mineral supply chain actors to positively engage with ASM.”

Conflict affected and high-risk areas

Mining can often take place in areas where there is armed conflict or political instability, with higher instances of human rights abuses. In many cases, mining in such areas exacerbates existing tensions and contributes to the perpetuation of violent conflict. This is because access to natural resources can become a key factor in the conflict, with different groups vying for control over mines. Operating in or sourcing from these high-risk areas can also increase risks of forced labor, child labor, and other human rights violations.

Companies based in or supplying from conflict-affected or high-risk areas should take additional due diligence steps to ensure they are not involved with human rights abuses through their supply chains. Reflecting the broad concerns about mining in such areas, there are existing international frameworks that help companies identify and address negative impacts. Adherence with these guidelines to assess and respond to risks and set up strong management systems feature in the GRI Mining Standard exposure draft.

Anna Stancher, Senior Program Manager at the Responsible Business Alliance, which is behind the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), shared:

“The last few years have seen mineral supply chains come into the spotlight for their role in the green energy transition and the production of critical raw materials. Policymakers, regulators, companies, civil society and investors are increasingly focused on the social and environmental impacts of mineral extraction, trading and processing. 

The expectation that companies conduct risk-based due diligence to prevent, mitigate and address significant adverse impacts, including human rights abuses and association with conflict, has long been formulated in globally recognized frameworks. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas, and industry standards such as the RMI’s Risk Readiness Assessment Criteria articulate due diligence best practices and the need for sustainability-related reporting. 

In this context, the availability of agreed-upon indicators, such as those proposed in GRI’s draft Sector Standard for mining has the potential to enhance quality and comparability of reporting, thereby establishing a level-playing field and supporting companies in their endeavors to identify and report meaningful data.” 

A public consultation on the exposure draft for the GRI Mining Sector Standard has now closed. All submitted responses will be considered before publication of the finalized Standard – which is expected in Q4 2023. 

International Girls in ICT Day is a global movement encouraging girls and young women to pursue science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) education and careers.

Cisco hosts events through our Women Rock-IT program, which began in 2014 and has seen more than two million participants, with over half enrolling in one of our Cisco Networking Academy courses as a result.

Join us on April 27 to hear from women who are working on critical environmental issues like climate change and learn how developing digital skills now can help protect our planet!

This is a guest blog from Nicole Sturzenberger, the Fundraising Director at Work on Climate, a nonprofit building the workforce humanity needs to solve climate change equitably and justly. She has led development efforts within national and global nonprofits, the University of California, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture. After focusing the majority of her career on food systems and food waste, she made a slight pivot in 2021 to center on climate solutions in general, understanding that diversification is the best strategy for addressing our climate crisis. Nicole believes in the power of collective action and the relationships we build to create systemic change. She loves spending time outside with her sons, skiing, climbing, surfing, and gardening.

Rooted to the Earth

Growing up in rural Maine, I spent much of my childhood exploring the outdoors with my family — scrambling on rocks and exploring tidal pools on the coast, skiing, hiking, and swimming in the mountains. Being outside with friends and family was an integral part of how I grew up. These experiences instilled in me a true love for our Earth and the people on it, which is why I chose to focus my work on sustainability and climate solutions.

My passion for philanthropy was greatly influenced by my parents, both of whom worked in hospitals mainly helping underserved communities. They were my role models in turning to nonprofit work. I remember a specific moment when I was 12 years old and did “take your daughter to work day” with my dad, who was a physician at a hospital for military veterans. I was in awe of how he went above and beyond to help people. While I didn’t follow his path into medicine, I chose the nonprofit path, which is in line with the type of work that he did to help people and causes that don’t normally get prioritized.

I have focused the majority of my career on sustainable food systems and in recent years the power of food waste as a climate solution. While researching, I discovered the book Drawdown edited by Paul Hawken, which identifies 93 technologies and practices that dramatically reduce concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Instead of getting depressed, I became inspired and excited for what humans could do with technology. I felt I had to pivot my career to focus on climate solutions in general. With the power of technology and community, we can come together to make a difference and solve the most pressing problem of our time.

Hope for the Future

This is why I still feel hope even after the release of the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I see transitioning the global workforce into climate-related careers as the most impactful method to deploying a myriad of solutions to drastically cut greenhouse gasses.

Work on Climate, where I am the Director of Fundraising, is a nonprofit organization building the workforce needed to solve climate change equitably and justly. Our vision is one where climate work is no longer siloed among enthusiasts but becomes mainstream, with the entire global talent pipeline (schools, job boards, conferences etc.) giving hundreds of millions of workers the skills and direction to participate in building the new green economy. As a member of this network, I am part of a movement of professionals creating a talent ecosystem poised to address the urgent need for climate solutions, and this brings me hope.

Our mission began when our co-founders, Eugene and Cass, left their dream jobs at Google to pursue work that aligned with their values and concerns about the climate crisis. To guide their journey, they built a Slack community of similarly minded climate jobseekers and founders. After Eugene’s farewell message went viral, the community exploded. Clearly their experience resonated with others and suddenly, they were talking to hundreds of people saying, “I want to work on climate, but I don’t know where to start, or if I’m even needed.”

Building a Community to Address the Climate Crisis

We are now 20,000+ members strong, with people from all walks of life: from students to executives and artists to chemical engineers, spread all over the globe. Member experience is curated based on jobs, roles, topics, and geographies so users find the right information for their climate job needs. We also coordinate community events and mentorship programs, ensuring we are effective in helping members find climate work. We estimate that we have aided over 2,000 people find climate jobs and employees, start climate companies, meet mentors, investors, LPs, advisors, customers, and more. We have also helped countless others feel positively connected to peers experiencing similar climate anxiety.

However, helping a few thousand people will not deploy solutions at the scale we need. We need to make the entire talent ecosystem climate-ready, and our research shows that the current system is ill-equipped to prepare individuals for climate work at the necessary scale. We need a movement to make this happen.

The Work on Climate community represents the foundation of our movement. Through these relationships, we are building partnerships with organizations best fit to make large changes across industries: schools, job boards, government bodies, conferences, industry associations, and so on. These initial partnerships will create blueprints for ways in which other organizations can support the climate workforce. Our efforts also aim to eliminate silos by making the transition top of mind to both climate and mainstream workforce organizations.

And we have been successful!

With the help of our community members in our #topic-ai community, we partnered with Predictive Analytics World (PAW), a major machine learning conference, to run PAW Climate — a conference on the commercial applications of machine learning for climate solutions, thus bringing climate solutions to the attention of the mainstream machine learning workforce.With the help of our #role-student community, we are bringing a series of seminars with climate founders explaining their business models to UPenn business school students in partnership with Penn Climate Ventures.We completed a research project to understand the barriers for active climate jobseekers and are now conducting the next project, focused on understanding the barriers stopping the general population from becoming climate jobseekers, in partnership with Terra.do and PureSpectrum.

Work on Climate’s impact is not just measured by the number of individuals we have helped find climate work, but in the millions of people who will need to transition into climate-related careers to solve the climate crisis. By building a movement in the talent ecosystem, we aim to enlist the help of organizations that have the ability to reach more people. With this collective action, we can bring hundreds of millions of people into careers focused on inventing and deploying climate solutions in every industry.

I am inspired by the boundless potential of human ingenuity and the belief that we can solve the most pressing problems of our time. We are looking to make an impact that will help ensure a sustainable future for generations to come. If you share the passion for climate solutions and want to join Work on Climate in building a climate-ready talent ecosystem, we invite you to learn more about our work and to get involved. Together, we can make a difference.

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Gunter Pauli has published over 40 books, including his most famous – The Blue Economy. He is an economist, serial entrepreneur and founder of ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives). Gunter was the first person to register ‘Zero Emissions’ as a trademark and recently won the 2021 Goi Peace Award for his contribution to society. Gunter continues to contribute by sharing different business models that aim to leave the world in a better place. His vision for the future of business is inspiring and challenges us to go one step further than current ‘sustainable’ models and practices.

In this episode, we chat with Gunter Pauli about the concepts contained in his pivotal ‘The Blue Economy’ book, which he originally published in 2010, that set out new business models that can work with nature to achieve better outcomes for the planet, for people and for companies’ bottom lines.

Today we refer to The Blue Economy as the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, however, when Gunter wrote his book he was referring to an economy beyond what we call the Green Economy.

Gunter asks the question, how is it possible that the things that are good for us and the planet are expensive, whereas the things that are bad for us and the planet are cheap – as an economist, he points out that this is a broken system.

Here are a few things we discussed in this great chat;

The difference between the “Green Economy” and the “Blue Economy”Listen to Gunter’s story of how he started his own “green” business, which lead him to question what a sustainable business should really look like and the economy that needs to be created to ensure that something that is good for us, and the planet, isn’t the most expensive in the market.The need to change from competition on price, which leads to cutting corners, to competition on value which is a defining part of the Blue Economy.Concepts and business models within his two new books – Coffee Solutions and Plastic SolutionsWhy we need to focus more on physics rather than chemistryIndustry Symbiosis rebrand to the Circular Economy (the principles of which have been around for a while).Creating something out of nothingThe need to relearn what we are being taught at school and university especially, for those studying business, sciences and engineering.Where short term thinking gets us, you might be surprised to learn that our hand sanitisers have plastic in them, causing billions of micro plastics to pollute our water when we then wash our hands.The importance of multiple revenue streams, burn rate and return on investment when developing your business. Gunter suggests to forget using a spreadsheet, or Google or Wikipedia. If we’re using sources that are out there already then we aren’t able to think outside the box and take risks. He also recommends not building a business plan until you have your first sale.Listen to Gunter chat through multiple business models and their simple ingenuity to create value for both people and the planet.

Learn from sustainability experts from around the world via our podcast, The Green MBA, or follow us on Instagram or Linkedin for regular sustainability news and insights.