What’s with all the paper talk?
Authored by
Simon Newbegin, Structural Design Director
Plastic is dead, long live paper!
Consumers (and advertisers) just can’t get enough of paper. So much so, that in our quest to reduce the amount of plastic in product packaging, we’re contributing to a global paper shortage. If we're to take recent sustainability-led marketing campaigns at face value, I'd certainly believe that paper packaging is the way forwards on our way to eliminating plastic waste and reducing our carbon footprint. However, as a product designer with 12 years of experience in the branding industry, I have a more balanced view.
In our fight against plastic, innovative paper packaging solutions are hitting the shelves daily. They’re popping up across categories and packaging formats, some creating entirely new formats altogether. A paper bottle? That’s cool, I want one.
The beverage industry, personal care brands, and cleaning products are all venturing into paper bottle formats and capturing our attention. They’re new, innovative, desirable and—as we’re being told—eco-friendly.
It’s easy to see why brands have turned to this material in their journey to deliver on ambitious CSR goals. Paper is the perfect poster child (no pun intended) for any brand wishing to highlight sustainability credentials to their consumers. It’s a tangible sell-in to those who are now more aware than ever of the effects we're having on our environment.
We’ve all seen the shocking images of the vast amounts of plastic floating in our oceans, killing ecosystems, and entering the food chain. For over a century we have relied on this virtually indestructible material to make our lives better, safer, and more convenient, but for all its many positives there have always been huge challenges with the waste produced by plastic.
Paper is something natural and renewable, so we accept its environmental credentials without question. We see a product introducing itself with “Hello, I’m paper!” and get a warm feeling that everything is going to be alright. But while our beloved paper is being greeted with open arms, plastic has become demonised as the root of all environmental evil.
“59% OF RECYCLABLE PLASTIC DOES NOT FIND ITS WAY INTO RECYCLING STREAMS.”
Plastic packaging – quite rightly - takes the brunt of this scrutiny. The most recent stats show that in the EU around 59% of recyclable plastic does not find its way into recycling streams. FIFTY NINE PERCENT! For brands, this obvious waste issue can be addressed through a reduction of plastics in packaging... and therefore a tangible story that can be sold to consumers.
So, all of these struggles lead us to believe that paper is the clear answer and any steps to omit plastic from our packaging is a good one, right?
Well, yes and no. As usual, with the complex topic of sustainability the answer is not always black and white.
So, what’s the problem?
Paper bottles, paper tubes, paper pouches, paper wrappers - all innovations that champion paper as the answer to our sustainability challenges – but all with another thing in common: their use of plastic.
Each one utilises plastic as a major packaging component to contain the product and/or retain its freshness. Unfortunately, none of this is intuitive from the packaging or the narrative that goes alongside it, which can cause confusion and make these innovations harder for consumers to recycle.
“THE MAIN DEBATE WITH SOME OF THESE SUSTAINABILITY EFFORTS IS UNDERSTANDING IF THEY ARE ACTUALLY “ECO-FRIENDLY” AT ALL”
Fundamentally, to recycle something we need to separate the materials as cleanly and efficiently as possible. This becomes increasingly difficult to achieve with some hybrid-style packaging formats or multi-layered solutions.
The main debate with some of these formats is understanding if they are “eco-friendly” at all. When done successfully, paper and plastic can work in unison to deliver a super lightweight, energy-efficient, and 100% recyclable solution. When done poorly, and communicated to the consumer poorly, they can cause more harm than good.
The key to an efficient recycling stream is in the communication to the consumer. Without a clear understanding of how or where to recycle the item (the paper bin? Plastic bin? Both? Neither?), it’s more likely to contaminate a recycling stream or end up in landfill. Brands must be more transparent about what we are purchasing, as responsibility is being placed on us as consumers to feed the materials back into the system. Without this the whole recycling system falls down.
As our collective knowledge of sustainability increases, we are seeing cases of eco aware consumers calling out brands on their claims, especially when discovering undeclared plastic components within “paper packaging”. These poorly communicated technologies can end up severely damaging trust and brand image. No brand wants the accolade of “greenwashing” associated with them.
This is where the waters can get murky as even though paper is the material we are being sold, it is plastic that is enabling these innovations to hit the shelves. For now at least, plastic is still being relied upon to do all of the hard work. As a lover of team sports I’ll put it into a sporting analogy: Paper may be the flair player and the one fans love to watch, but plastic is the engine room and driving force behind the team.
Up until this point we have seen huge efforts to reduce plastic use across the board, the quick wins have already been achieved through moves to alternative materials and packaging formats. However, the many unique properties of plastic are proving extremely difficult to replace. In some cases, replacing plastic can even lead to a more negative environmental impact.
“A STUDY BY EMPA FOUND THAT THROWING AWAY A PHYSICAL CUCUMBER THAT HAS GONE BAD HAD THE EQUIVALENT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF PRODUCING 93 PLASTIC CUCUMBER WRAPS.”
The food industry is a prime example. Supermarkets that were looking to prevent food waste began wrapping fruit and vegetables individually. This practice has long been criticised by so-called experts for the excessive use of plastic. However, a study by Empa found that throwing away a physical cucumber that has gone bad had the equivalent environmental impact of producing 93 plastic cucumber wraps. If the wrap can give a piece of fruit an extra week’s shelf life and help prevent its waste, the benefits of plastic can outweigh the negatives - but this kind of narrative is rarely communicated to the public and allows for misinformation to spread.
A new image for plastic
In my opinion, despite how society feels about the use of plastic in our packaging, it’s clear we still need it as part of our sustainability efforts. Think of it this way: our issue with plastic has never been the material itself, but our irresponsible use of it. The challenge is in creating end markets for recycled plastic that give it value.
With the UK’s new Plastics Tax going into effect, a major goal is encouraging the use of recycled content in packaging and pushing businesses to think more broadly about incorporating recycled plastic into their products. If more value is given to recycled plastic, then the industry will place more importance (and more investment) in its recovery, reprocessing and reuse.
“THINK OF IT THIS WAY: OUR ISSUE WITH PLASTIC HAS NEVER BEEN THE MATERIAL ITSELF, BUT OUR IRRESPONSIBLE USE OF IT.”
At the end of the day, it is in the best interests of brands to ensure consumers are fully aware of how to recycle their packaging. Targets to increase PCR (post-consumer recycled) content in plastic packaging will only be successful if the quality and quantity of recycled plastic improves significantly. The more informed we are as consumers the better we become at recycling, giving brands a higher yield of quality PCR plastic for their packaging.
So rather than scrapping plastic or replacing it altogether, the answer is to give more value to the plastic that is currently in operation and educating us on how to recycle more responsibly. It is on brands to do more to raise awareness of their responsible use of the material instead of hiding its very presence.
Perhaps it’s about time we gave plastic an image rebrand; from something we love to hate, to something we hate to waste.