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Archive for Paper and Plastics Packaging

Pitting Packaging Materials Against Each Other Misses the Bigger Picture

Recent media articles on the potential of paper packaging to replace some of the single-use plastic items being banned in Canada, such as shopping bags and take-out food containers, miss the bigger picture of waste management and consumption in Canada.
 
Some articles have shared concerns raised by some environmentalists about shifting from plastic to paper packaging materials, but they miss providing fact-based information on how paper packaging is made, how forests are managed in Canada, the function of packaging, the rise of consumption, and the role of the consumer.

The major paper packaging grades made in Canada – which include containerboard (used to make corrugated cardboard boxes), boxboard (e.g., cereal or shoe boxes), and Kraft paper (used for bags and sacs) – are made from a highly recyclable and renewable material that is used repeatedly through the process of recycling.

And yet some articles refer to paper packaging as “single-use,” but on average, paper packaging fibres can be recovered and reused at least 5-7 times.
 
Focusing on the term “single-use” can miss the point about the larger issues surrounding waste management and consumption, and divert attention away from the federal government’s overarching goal of reducing plastic pollution.
 
In essence, all packaging materials – be it glass, metal, plastic, or paper – can be considered single-use, but it’s clear that some are more successfully recycled than others. Paper packaging is one of those successful examples. It has an established recycling system and end markets in place to capture used paper packaging so that those materials can be recovered and recycled to make new paper packaging products again and again.

While most paper packaging made in Canada is produced with recycled content, the paper fibres it was originally made from came from a tree. However, the Canadian paper packaging industry doesn’t use much in the way of freshly cut trees, and the little that is harvested must be successfully regenerated by Canadian law.

Some of the articles refer to deforestation without explaining what that means. There is an important distinction between deforestation and harvesting. Deforestation is when forest land is permanently cleared, with trees being removed so that the land can be used for something else. Harvesting, forest fires, and insect infestations do not constitute deforestation, since the affected areas will grow back.
 
The Canadian government conserves and protects its forests through strict laws and science-based sustainable forest management practices, which stipulate that all areas harvested on public land (94% of Canada’s forests are on public land) must be reforested, either by tree replanting or through natural regeneration (which occurs when new seedlings or sprouts are produced by fallen trees).
 
In addition, paper fibres used by PPEC member mills are verified to be responsibly sourced by independent, third-party forest certification organizations such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA Z809).

While the purpose of some of these media articles is to share environmental concerns surrounding various packaging materials, the articles do not provide information about the function of packaging, or the proliferation of packaging, which should be recognized in any story about packaging.

The function of packaging is to protect its contents, keep the product safe, facilitate transportation along the supply chain, and provide information to the consumer. In some cases that includes mandated information (e.g., ingredient and nutrition labelling, storage information, product use, expiration dates, and bilingual requirements).
 
There is also the reality of the world we live in today that didn’t exist 20+ years ago. It is undeniable that the use of packaging has surged as consumer shopping and dining habits have changed rapidly. The rise of e-commerce and online shopping, along with the increased use of food delivery services, meal kits, and prepared meals in grocery stores, have seen an exponential increase in packaging and in waste.

It’s clear that consumers want convenience but there are trade-offs in society’s decisions. We all have choices we make when making purchasing decisions, just as we have choices in managing our waste.

Everyone has a role to play in minimizing waste and diverting recyclable materials from landfill – businesses that make and sell products and packaging, waste management industry (recyclers, haulers, MRFs), and consumers. Ultimately it is the consumer who decides how to treat their waste and they need to do their part of properly cleaning and sorting their recyclables from their waste and organics to ensure everything that can be recycled is recycled.

Yes, the federal government’s plastics ban will see businesses shift to other packaging alternatives, including paper-based packaging, and our industry will look to meet the demand as needed, creating paper packaging products that are responsibly certified, sustainable, and recyclable.

As the national association representing the environmental interests of the Canadian paper packaging industry, we will stand by our industry and work to communicate the facts about how paper packaging is made. Our industry has relied on recycled content as its feedstock for decades, making investments in recycling equipment, and buying back high-quality old corrugated cardboard and used paper packaging to ensure they have a good supply of recycled paper fibres. Using recycled content is an inherent part of the Canadian paper packaging industry’s business model.
 
When media articles narrowly focus on one material over another, they miss the opportunity of educating and informing the public on the bigger picture of how waste is managed, the proliferation of consumption, and how we all have a role to play in minimizing waste.

Rachel Kagan

Executive Director Paper & Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC)

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Paper-based Packaging Leads the Way for Ontario’s Household Blue Box Program

Paper-based packaging continues to be a success story in Ontario’s household Blue Box program, as measured by marketed tonnage, based on new data released by the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), the regulator mandated by the Government of Ontario to enforce the province’s circular economy laws.

RPRA’s new Datacall Report summarizes information generated by the 246 programs participating in the Ontario Blue Box Program in 2021, and highlights residential waste management statistics and trends.

Overall, the program saw a decline in the provincial diversion rate to 49.1%, a stat the program has mostly hovered at for the past 10 years as shown in Figure 1 (all charts in this blog are from RPRA’s Datacall Report).

Diversion is measured after the collected material has been processed at a material recycling facility (MRF). So that essentially means that nearly half of what is placed in the Blue Box does not get recycled, which could be for a number of different reasons, such as contamination (food soiled materials, such as used yogurt or peanut butter containers, for example), materials that are not readily recyclable (e.g., hangers, toys), or residents not properly separating their waste and incorrectly placing non-recyclables (i.e. organics, waste) in their Blue Boxes.

Of interest to the Paper and Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC) and its members is marketed Blue Box tonnage (Figure 3), which represents materials that have been sorted and processed by a MRF, and then baled, sold, and used in place of virgin materials.

These are materials that are actually recycled and paper-based packaging – which includes old corrugated cardboard, old boxboard, and a portion of residential mixed papers and mixed fibres packaging – leads the way in the most marketed materials with 289,689 tonnes marketed in 2021 (up from 271,433 tonnes in 2020), representing 39% of the total Blue Box marketed tonnage (736,379).

Paper-based packaging leads the way in the most marketed materials with 289,689 tonnes marketed in 2021.

The second largest material is printed paper – newsprint, household fine paper, telephone books, and catalogues – with 20% of marketed tonnes. However, this category continues to decline year over year as more homes go paperless (when was the last time you saw a telephone book?!).

Printed papers have experienced a nearly 66% decline in tonnage from 2016-2021, as shown in Table 4, while paper-based packaging has increased by 72.5% over the same period.

In analyzing the latest Ontario Blue Box data, it’s clear that paper is a success story. More than two-thirds of all paper that Ontario households generate is not just collected but actually recycled through Ontario’s Blue Box program. And much of the recovered paper fibres are supplied to PPEC member mills who use it to produce new paper packaging products, including boxes and cartons, made primarily of recycled content.

The Ontario Blue Box program begins its transition to a new producer responsibility regulatory framework starting this July, which will see producers take over 100% of the operational and financial management of the program by December 31, 2025.

There is no doubt that paper-based packaging will continue to be an important component of the Ontario Blue Box program – and PPEC expects to see a continued increase in paper packaging as brands shift from other types of packaging to sustainable, renewable, and recyclable paper-based packaging – but we will be watching the transition closely. The hope is that a shift to a producer responsibility will result in improved end markets, better sorting by residents, less contamination, and overall higher diversion and recycling rates in Ontario.

Glossary of Key Recycling Terms
(Definitions adapted from RPRA)
 
Collected Blue Box Tonnes: Blue Box materials that are collected curbside and/or at a depot.
 
Disposed Tonnes: Includes garbage and processing residuals from recycling and composting operations disposed at a landfill or incineration facilities.
 
Diverted Tonnes: Includes recycling activities, municipal organic collection and processing activities, provincial deposit systems for alcohol containers, residential on-property management and municipally operated reuse activities.
 
Generated Tonnes: Includes recycling, reuse and garbage material produced by Ontario residents; represents combination of disposed tonnes and diverted tonnes.
 
Landfilled residential material: Includes garbage Tonnes and processing residues; part of Disposed Tonnes calculation.
 
Marketed Blue Box Tonnes: Blue Box materials sorted and processed by a Material Recycling Facility (MRF) that is then sold and used in place of virgin materials.
 
Diversion Rate: Diverted Tonnes / Generated Tonnes x 100

Rachel Kagan

Executive Director Paper & Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC)

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Some of the worst performing Blue Box materials pay the lowest fees

This is a story about what’s recyclable, what is sent
for recycling, and the fees that stewards of those materials pay into Ontario’s
Blue Box system. In what seems like a perversion of the ‘polluter pays’
principle, some of the worst performing materials pay among the lowest fees.

There are two elements to this story. One is that most of the
Blue Box materials currently collected in Ontario are recyclable according to
Competition Bureau guidelines on environmental labelling and advertising. What that
means is that at least 50 per cent of the Ontario population can put them out
for recycling.

But being ‘recyclable’ (able to be recycled) and
being physically sent on for recycling are two quite different things. For
example, over 99 per cent of Ontario households in 2018 could place aluminum
foil in their Blue Boxes but only three per cent of that foil was sent on for
recycling. Similarly, with steel paint cans. Over 94% of households were able
to recycle
them in the Blue Box but only seven per cent were recycled. And
polystyrene foam. Over 60 per cent of Ontario households had access to its recycling
but only four per cent was recycled. The largest gaps between being ‘recyclable’
and being sent on for recycling are highlighted in the chart below. Unfortunately,
there are opportunities here for greenwashing: standing back and saying that a
material is recyclable by households but doing little to increase its recovery.

And the fees that some industry stewards pay into the Blue
Box system are not exactly encouraging higher recovery of some of the worst
performing materials. Stewards of aluminum foil, for example, with a three per
cent recovery rate, only pay $133 a tonne. That’s only $20 more than the
stewards of corrugated boxes with a 98 per cent recovery rate! Stewards of
steel paint cans, with a recovery rate of only seven per cent, pay even less ($69.70
a tonne). In steel’s case, the stewards of paint cans are riding on the backs
of the stewards of steel food and beverage cans, who pay the same amount.

Fees, it seems, need to be more closely targeted at specific
materials within a broader group. And part of that targeting is sorting out
what a material’s real recycling rate is. What is in the sometimes mixed
bales that leave a material recycling facility (MRF) for an end-market, for
example, and how much of the different materials in that bale actually end up
being recycled?

Blue Box materials chart

The current discrepancies between performance and steward fees illustrate the fact that the Ontario Blue Box funding formula gives far more weight to the cost of managing materials in the system than it does to promoting better environmental performance. This is not what former Environment Minister Leona Dombrowsky promised when promoting the new 50 per cent industry-funded Blue Box scheme to a meeting of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters way back in 2004: “We plan to send a clear message that in Ontario, good performers are rewarded with incentives while polluters will pay for their actions.”

Newspapers’ big fall, but more packaging in Ontario households

While the collective weight of Blue Box materials generated by Ontario households has not changed much over the last 16 years (down 12%), the type of material that ends up there certainly has.

Far fewer newspapers, for starters. Almost 162,000 tonnes fewer, according to a PPEC comparison of Stewardship Ontario generation data between 2003 and 2018.

Newspapers’ Net Change in Generated Tonnes

Magazines and catalogues have also taken a hit (49,000 tonnes less) together with printing and writing paper (down 39,000 tonnes). Telephone directories, not surprisingly, are on the way out. Overall, the generation of printed paper that ends up in Ontario homes has fallen some 41% over the period, mainly because of inroads made by electronic or digital competition. Millennials (and there are many more of them these days) are not known as great newspaper readers.

Counterbalancing these losses are big tonnage gains in both plastic and paper packaging: some 93,000 more tonnes of plastic (mostly the grab-bag of “Other Plastics” and PET bottles); and 93,000 more tonnes of paper (mainly corrugated boxes and boxboard cartons). The spread of E-commerce delivery is expected to boost residential corrugated box tonnages even more in future years.

The table shows the net change in tonnages of some of the materials generated by Ontario households between 2003 and 2018 (with the losing categories highlighted in yellow) while the pie-charts give a graphic comparison by material group.

Newspapers’ charts

Source: PPEC Analysis of Stewardship Ontario generation data 2003 – 2018

Fewer newspapers but more packaging in Ontario households

While the collective weight of Blue Box materials generated by Ontario households has not changed much over the last 15 years, the type of material that ends up there certainly has.

Far fewer newspapers, for starters. Almost 136,000 tonnes fewer, according to a PPEC comparison of Stewardship Ontario generation data between 2003 and 2017.

Magazines and catalogues have also taken a hit (41,000 tonnes less) together with printing and writing paper (down 13,000 tonnes). Telephone directories, not surprisingly, are on the way out. Overall, the generation of printed paper that ends up in Ontario homes has fallen some 35% over the period, mainly because of inroads made by electronic or digital competition. Millennials (and there are many more of them these days) are not known as great newspaper readers.

Counterbalancing these losses are big tonnage gains in both plastic and paper packaging: some 99,000 more tonnes of plastic (mostly the grab-bag of “Other Plastics” and PET bottles); and 89,000 more tonnes of paper (mainly corrugated boxes and boxboard cartons). The spread of E-commerce delivery is expected to boost residential corrugated box tonnages even more in future years.

The table shows the net change in tonnages of some of the materials generated by Ontario households between 2003 and 2017 (with the losing categories highlighted in yellow) while the pie-charts give a graphic comparison by material group.

Household Generation 2003 & 2017

Source: PPEC Analysis of Stewardship Ontario generation data 2003 – 2017