Avery Dennison’s sharpened look at “sustainability” identifies holistic Life Cycle Assessment benefits

02 Dec 2020 --- Packaging initiatives classifying as “sustainable” depend on different regional circular infrastructures, transparent life cycle assessment (LCA) reporting and company commitments. 

The umbrella term “sustainability” is complex, but increasingly understood within the circular economy and preventative planetary health categories.

This is according to Flor Peña Herron, sustainability project lead EMEA at Avery Dennison Label and Packaging Materials. 

PackagingInsights’ tête-à-tête with Peña Herron reveals how “environmental sustainability” is about more than just “ticking a box” on front packaging labels.

The vicious cycle shown in yogurt pots
The phrase “sustainable packaging” is broad because it doesn’t just depend on a product’s design but its end-of-life disposal.

Closing the loop can take on many forms. For example, recycled yogurt pots don’t necessarily need to be recreated into new yogurt pots.

“Material should keep on flowing and be used for many years. If the first use is a yogurt pot, the second use a carpet and, in 30 years it becomes a tube, that’s fine: there are three cycles.” 

But the materials used in creating these recycled products depend on an active market facilitating supply and demand. Their absence creates a vicious circle. 

LCAs assess the environmental footprint of a product, but their results can be “difficult to interpret,” says Peña Herron.“People think yogurt pots made of polystyrene are not recyclable. The industry designed polystyrene recycling 20 years ago, but because there is no market for recycled material, nobody’s collecting that polystyrene because the industry doesn’t need it.” 

Even if the polymers used to create a yogurt pot are technically recyclable, it won’t have a beneficial environmental impact if the industry doesn’t have a market for it, or as Peña Herron says, “if you cannot fulfill the whole life cycle.”

Quantifying sustainability
What’s needed is a scientific, holistic view of the aforementioned life cycle. 

LCAs provide a framework to measure products’ environmental impact. “They are a great tool,” says Peña Herron, but can also be “difficult to interpret.”

“For companies like us in the middle of our supply chain, we are only part of a final product. Conducting LCAs will only represent our number for the label, but we never represent the final number or the final LCA for a total packaging,” she explains.

Avery Dennison’s LCA model helps its customers understand the environmental consequences of their labeling and packaging decisions via six impact categories:

• Oil barrels and fossil content found in raw materials
• Trees used to make raw materials
• Water use
• CO2 emissions 
• Solid waste generated
• Primary energy used (kWh or MJ)

Importantly, one step in a product’s supply chain can be deemed environmentally friendly, but perhaps the subsequent move has a larger carbon footprint.

Peña Herron adds that the LCA must be evaluated in its entirety, not just a few points. For example, Avery Dennison can only provide information on its labels’ eco-impact, but not of the entire bottle structures and caps that they are placed on.

Therefore, setting clear parameters is crucial to prevent LCA findings from being misleading or taken out of context. 

Not just a cost barrier
Making LCAs a standard industry practice is still five to ten years away, Peña Herron predicts. But money is not the only relevant currency. “Redirecting toward LCAs takes time and training,” she says. 

“You need to engage with your suppliers to understand what type of information they can provide you to fulfill your LCA and what information your customer will request from you.” 

Most polystyrene products are currently not recycled due to underinvestment in the compactors and logistical systems required.The pressure to commit to transparency is also rushing in from different avenues. “Legislation and governments are not giving us too many choices to not take [LCAs] into consideration,” she explains. 

Meanwhile, sustainable practices were once a “nice” added value, but without them, companies are now having a difficult time maintaining a competitive advantage. 

“If companies don’t see that, then those companies are probably meant to disappear,” she warns. 

Take small steps, but make them count
In a previous interview, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation told PackagingInsights that considering the scale of the single-use waste problem, “change cannot come fast enough.”

But from a practical standpoint, Peña Herron maintains that “it’s better to fully dedicate to small but feasible steps with a larger goal in mind than struggle to meet too ambitious sustainability goals.”

A prominent example for her are some goals set at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 yet to be achieved by the 2015 Paris Agreement. 

“If you want to achieve things in the long term, small steps are as valuable as big steps. If you can achieve more, always try for more, but if you cannot do more for different circumstances, smaller steps are always good.”

Avery Dennison has committed to reducing its absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 3 percent year-over-year and at least a 26 percent reduction by 2025 compared to its 2015 baseline. As of September 2019, it has reduced its emissions by more than 30 percent against its baseline.

Moreover, the company aims to source 100 percent certified paper, of which at least 70 percent will be Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified. As of last year, it sourced 89 percent certified paper, of which 79 percent of its face paper and liner are FSC-certified.

“We are trying to be as agile as possible and investigate what the industry needs and trends are – so we can perform with as few resources as possible and we can enable recycling as much as we can,” she concludes.

By Anni Schleicher