Packaging Innovations 2024 live: Preparing “a collaborative ecosystem” ahead of UK glass refillable trial
28 Feb 2024 | Ecosurety
At Packaging Innovations we catch up with Will Ghali, CEO of Ecosurety, who tells us about an upcoming refillable glass packaging trial in the UK. We also discuss the current legislative environment and how the compliance scheme is helping businesses prepare for a changing landscape.
This is Louis Gur Langton for Packaging Insights.
I'm joined by Will Galley, CEO of EcoSurety.
Hi.
Can you tell me a bit about what EcoSurety is doing at the show this year?
OK, we're here.
It's a packaging show.
We are a packaging compliance scheme.
We help brands, a lot of retailers and fast moving consumer goods, packaged consumer goods brands.
We help them with their packaging compliance and the recyclability of their packaging and the sustainability of their packaging, so.
The likes of Mars, Nestle, Heinz, Sainsbury's, etc.
We help them make sure that they are compliant with the UK regulations around packaging and recycling and make sure that the right amount of recycling takes place on their behalf and that they pay for that.
And also we advise them on the recyclability of their packaging, how to improve the recyclability of their packaging, how to make their packaging more sustainable, i.e., more circular, and also we're running a few pilots now on.
How they can move from single use packaging to refill and reuse alternatives.
So my dream would be how can we help some of the world's and the UK's biggest brands move away from single use packaging as the default format to refill alternatives as the norm.
What do you think the biggest challenges are for packaging companies this year with the PPWR coming up?
I think the clarity on what does EPR mean for brands.
So the PRN system has been going for a while and the PRN system pays for recycling.
It incentivizes recyclers to recycle materials, and that's been going for a while and that's clearly understood.
EPR is a new new legislation, new regulation.
It has already kicked in from a reporting point of view in terms of the cost of EPR that's going to kick in next year in October 2025, so there needs to be greater clarity from government, from on how is EPR going to be implemented, what are the base fees, what are the modulated fees for ER.
So our role is to help provide that clarity for brands, to help them understand what are the implications of for them.
And what mitigating actions can they take in terms of moving to different better packaging formats that will lower the cost of their ER going forward, lower their carbon footprint, and allow them to feel that they are making more sustainable packaging choices.
You mentioned the difference between single use and Reusable formats.
There's been a lot of dispute, particularly with and so on, between what's the most sustainable option.
What's your take on this?
No one has cracked it yet.
There's been lots of trials and lots of pilots.
Someone the other day said to me there have been more pilots than you find at Heathrow.
On refill systems or refill refill pilots, refill tests or trials, and what we're trying to do now is move from pilots and trials to actually rolling out a refill system for one particular packaging format and the packaging format we are.
Starting with his glass, I can't talk about exactly which brands, but it's a collection of brands across alcoholic drinks, wine and beer, and also soft drinks that are made in glass, and we are looking to run a trial for them, a fairly large scale trial with a view to then roll that out nationally in the UK.
On glass bottles, and so I think that will be the hopefully prove that it's commercially viable and deliver good results, but that will be the first large scale refill trial that's done with some major brands in the UK on glass, then I think once you've got the learnings from that, we'll try and apply those to different packaging formats that might, might switch from single use to refill.
Plastic is probably the next one that I think needs to be tackled, but once the model is working, there's no reason why you couldn't apply that to cardboard as.
Cardboard is trickier because it gets damaged much more easily than plastic or glass.
If you had one message for the packaging industry and for policymakers in 2024, what would it be?
Collaborate.
I guess we are moving from an era where Brands and businesses used to compete for competitive advantage and that's great and it's good to be competitive, but in order to solve some of these systemic problems, the industry needs to collaborate, so the brands need to collaborate with the retailers because the retailers are typically where the brands appear on the shelf.
We need to work together to educate consumers because there's an element of behavior change that is required.
And we need to work collaboratively with recyclers and local authorities.
Local authorities typically do the collection of the material.
Recyclers recycle it, so we need a kind of a collaborative ecosystem to talk to each other with one objective, which is how do we make this packaging that we all use and enjoy and it protects the products more sustainable and specifically.
Increase the recyclability of it, move beyond recycling to refill, and find solutions that have a lower carbon footprint because the packaging industry contributes to the carbon footprint of the UK, of the world, and there's an opportunity for us to be less carbon intensive in terms of the packaging formats that we use.
Thank you.
