Manufacturing Reduce, reuse…
Attitudes towards environmental sustainability have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, with climate change encouraging both food manufacturers and their customers to consume more responsibly – as well as cut down on waste. Companies have unsurprisingly followed suit, adapting their packaging to be more environmentally friendly, a shift with potentially revolutionary consequences for both the industry and the planet at large. Andrea Valentino chats to David Clark, VP of sustainability at packaging giant Amcor, to find out more.
F
or years, activists have battled to dovetail the future of the planet with personal responsibility. To save the world, we were told, we had to eat less meat, take fewer flights, and swap our Range Rovers for a trusty pedal bike. We were advised, moreover, to recycle. Since the 1980s, the plastics industry and its friends in government have spent tens of millions of dollars promoting recycling, exhorting consumers to do their bit. In 2001, to give an example, California put $10m into a glitzy recycling ad campaign, while cities as varied as New York and Beijing now offer cash prizes for leftover bottles and bags.
These campaigns, to say nothing of their effects on everyday people, are far from useless. According to work by the University of Stanford, one tonne of recycled plastic can save 16.3 barrels of oil and avoid using 30 cubic yards of landfill space. All the same, we can only recycle if our packaging is actually recyclable. This may seem like an obvious point – but consider the numbers. According to Society of Plastics Industry guidelines, there are seven types of plastic. Yet recyclers have traditionally only been able to recycle the first two, with everything from clear food packaging to ketchup bottles being left to the dump. This challenge, moreover, is reflected in other statistics too. Of the seven billion tonnes of plastic waste generated globally so far, just 10% has been successfully recycled. Part of the solution, in other words, is for packaging companies to develop products that can more easily be given a new lease of life. Given the
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