Packaging Impressions' Parlor: Carbon Wins — Little Things Mean a Lot

The rise in e-commerce, supply chain shifts, the impact of digital and a global move towards a more sustainable lifestyle all play a fundamental role in shaping what the successful packaging industry of the future will look like. As the packaging industry evolves, adapting to trends that are central to our changing world, we find that little things mean a lot and carbon wins can be hiding in plain sight.

As the first blogger for the Packaging Impressions' Parlor, I will examine sustainability trends and topics that will create a better packaging industry, using some insights from my work with DS Smith’s North America Packaging and Paper division. We work with the world’s biggest FMCG brands, partnering with them to advance their sustainability agenda in ways that bring a meaningful reduction to their carbon emissions, and assist in minimizing their overall impact on the environment. And there are many ways packaging companies including DS Smith can help realize the promise of greater packaging sustainability; it is one of the best things about my job as a sustainability manager.

DS Smith’s investments in energy efficiency reflect the significant value the company places in being a sustainability leader, and we have set ambitious targets for ourselves with regards to circularity and the Circular Economy. The packaging world has much to gain in future growth and opportunity addressing the principles of a Circular Economy focused on recyclability and reuse instead of waste. That way, our industry can achieve more, while using fewer resources, to help limit the impacts of climate change.

A Circular Design Metrics program DS Smith uses with clients helps guide companies in designing reuse and recyclability into packaging. | Credit: Allison Berg, DS Smith North America Packaging and Paper

The winners in our industry will advance toward a circular model, partnering with their customers to answer current and future consumer demand for sustainable packaging.

Recognizing the need for circularity led DS Smith to become a strategic partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2019. The Foundation is a charity committed to creating a circular economy, “designed to eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerate nature.” The Foundation’s work pursues circularity from the important perspective of it being “an economic system that delivers better outcomes for people, and the environment.”

Even though it offers significant advantages, we know that our customers face significant challenges adapting to circular economy thinking, in everything from plastics replacement to recyclability. Working with the Foundation has helped us provide even better support in our work helping businesses and brands reach important circularity goals.

The scale of the challenge to reduce carbon emissions will certainly demand significant change and investment among businesses, governments, and consumers. But in tandem, some solutions to cutting carbon are those hiding in plain sight and would also apply to any packaging company looking to run leaner and use fewer natural resources. Here is a list of some important steps that nearly any packaging company can look to achieve:

• Switching to LED lighting – a proven energy saver that should sit at the top of the list for most packaging companies considering facility upgrades or embarking on new construction. Last year, LED lighting upgrades at DS Smith facilities – where we replaced 40,000 bulbs worldwide – accounted for a 6,201-tonne decrease in carbon emissions and a 65% decrease in the amount electrical power consumption required for lighting. LED bulbs can last between 10 and 20 years with no maintenance. That long life without replacement, and the reduced energy LED bulbs require, can make for an exceptionally short ROI even when done on a large scale.
• Turning lights off when not in use. Some lights must be left on to ensure a site is safe in a packaging plant, but for everywhere else in a facility, controlling lights with motion sensors makes a lot of sense.
• Powering down equipment. Similar to the lighting issue, packaging plants often have equipment that is on, perhaps in standby mode, and drawing power where there is no immediate need for the equipment to be used. Powering down equipment and turning it off whenever it is practical to do so is a good step for reducing energy use and decreasing your carbon footprint.
• Keeping doors, delivery bays, and windows closed when they do not need to be open makes a difference in terms of energy usage for heating and air conditioning.
• Managing compressed air systems. These systems are common in packaging plants, and to increase their efficiency DS Smith, we regularly review and adapt how and where we use them, as well as prioritize maintenance to eliminate leaks.

These common-sense methods are some of the simpler, yet highly effective things everyone in the packaging industry can adopt to make the industry more sustainable. These tactics can also generate a relatively fast return to the bottom line. As mentioned above, the financial savings possible with LED lights, for example, can accumulate quickly.

There are increasing expectations from consumers that companies deliver sustainable solutions, radically reduce their impact on the natural world and create a positive impact for people and planet. Meeting those expectations requires not just a transition to renewable energy, but also the drive to address how we make and use things in our everyday lives – in short, that we move to the circular economy.

This presents a huge opportunity, one that requires new ways of thinking. Transitioning to a circular economy will enable us to achieve more from less and limit the impacts of climate change.

At DS Smith, the circular nature of our business is already serving as the gateway to the circular economy for customers as we support their changing needs, sustainability goals, and the growing demand for sustainable packaging.

In the long term, circularity represents the best way for packaging companies and their customers to respond to changing consumer shopping habits and beliefs. (For more about circularity, I recommend viewing some of the remarkable content available through the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. DS Smith partnered with the Foundation to develop an important set of Circular Design Principles DS Smith follows, as well as to develop our overall sustainability strategy, Now & Next.)

Being smarter about energy use — along with adopting renewable energy sources, reducing waste, and increasing packaging recyclability and reuse – gives packaging companies the opportunity to meet many of their customers’, and end users’, expectations. We can create more choice and convenience, but with less impact on the world around us.

As we continue the conversation in this Packaging Impressions blog, I look forward to discussing the sustainability strategies and innovations that, now more than ever, create the road map to our future as an industry.

Allison Berg is the Sustainability Manager for DS Smith North America Packaging and Paper (NAPP). This Atlanta-based division of DS Smith – a leading provider of sustainable fiber-based packaging worldwide – operates 15 U.S. manufacturing, paper and recycling facilities. Berg manages regional delivery of DS Smith’s Now & Next Sustainability Strategy, which focuses on closing the sustainability loop through better design, protecting natural resources by making the most of every fiber, reducing waste and pollution through circular solutions and equipping people to lead the transition to a circular economy.