On behalf of the team at the Paper and Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC), we would like to take this opportunity to say Happy Holidays and thank you for your unwavering support over the last year.
As we wrap up a very busy year, we wanted to reach out and share a few of the positive actions that PPEC took throughout 2022:
PPEC launched a new tool focused on answering some of the most frequently asked questions about paper packaging and the environment.
Our industry’s positive circular economy story was profiled in an article published online and a printed insert in the National Post.
PPEC continued to be a strong advocate to government in representing the members on key environmental issues, including proposed changes to paper and packaging recycling regulations and programs. As PPEC continued to advocate for fairness in legislated paper packaging recycling programs, we participated in government consultations, provided industry’s feedback in numerous submissions, and monitored ongoing changes across the country.
We’re excited about 2023, and we look forward to continuing our work as the trusted and credible environmental voice for the Canadian paper-based packaging industry. Together, we can promote the industry’s environmental sustainability achievements and our strong, relevant, and impactful circular economy story.
Thank you once again for your support and best wishes for a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season.
PPEC Holiday Closure
In celebration of the holiday season, the PPEC office will be closed December 26-30, 2022. The office will reopen on January 2, 2023.
There have been a lot of recent developments related to Canada’s Zero Plastic Waste Agenda and the federal government’s ban on single-use plastic products, which is why it is a perfect time to share this blog examining some of the latest news, key activities, and the potential impacts on the paper packaging industry.
Ban on single-use plastic
On June 22, the Single-use Plastics Prohibition Regulations were published, which prohibit the manufacture, import, sale, and export of the following single-use plastic items: checkout bags, cutlery, foodservice ware made from or containing problematic plastics, ring carriers, stir sticks and straws.
The ban comes into effect December 2022, with sale of the prohibited items effective December 2023, and the ban on exporting the prohibited plastics by the end of 2025.
Consultations on plastics labelling rules and data collection
On July 25, the federal government launched two consultations related to their work on combating plastics pollution, including the development of labelling rules for recyclability and compostability, and the development of a federal plastics registry.
The government also intends to regulate the use of terms such as “compostable,” “degradable,” and “biodegradable” in the labelling of plastic packaging and single-use items; and plans to develop a registry that would require producers to report annually on the quantity of plastic products they place on the Canadian market, and how these products are diverted from landfills after use.
Plastics ban and paper packaging
Going back to the single-use plastics ban, the government’s guidance document for selecting alternatives provides info on how to transition away from the banned items, offering that plastics could be reduced by using other materials including wood, paper, and moulded pulp fibre.
So, what does this mean for paper-based packaging?
Both from a broader perspective, but also with regards to the specific newly banned items, there is a market shift towards using more sustainable and renewal packaging materials. Companies such as P&G, Carlsberg, Amazon, McDonald’s, and Nestlé, to name a few, have all recently made announcements regarding changes in some of their packaging, with a clear shift towards paper-based packaging.
This ban will likely see that trend continue, and groups like Fisher International believe the Pulp and Paper industry has an opportunity to step in to provide alternatives, which they wrote about in Canada’s New Plastic Ban Could Drive Renewed Interest in the P&P Industry. While their article raises a lot of important questions for the industry to consider – such as impact on future pulp prices, capital investment needs, and the state of sustainably-managed forest supply – it doesn’t speak directly to the environmental attributes of paper-based packaging, so let’s take a minute to talk about that.
The major paper packaging grades made in Canada – corrugate boxes, paperboard boxes, and paper bags – are produced primarily with recycled content. While the paper fibres originally come from trees, hardly any of Canada’s commercial forests are harvested for paper packaging; and by law, every hectare that is harvested in Canada must be successfully regenerated.
A mill produces the material used to make paper packaging, using mainly recycled content, and then a converter turns it into paper packaging. After having used the packaging, the customer recycles it, and the recycled product goes back to the mill, where it is remade into new paper-based packaging. And the cycle repeats itself again and again.
Just how many times is ‘again and again’? Initial research had shown that paper could be recycled up to seven times, and corrugated box fibres up to ten times, but a recent study from the Graz University of Technology in Austria found that fibre-based packaging material can be recycled at least 25 times without losing mechanical or structural integrity.
When it comes to residential recycling programs that accept paper-based packaging, we know that 96% of Canadians have access to recycling for corrugated boxes and paper bags, and 94% for boxboard cartons, determined through an independent third-party study commissioned by PPEC.
For recycling, PPEC has estimated a national recovery rate for corrugated boxes of at least 85%, with recycling even higher in certain provinces, such as Ontario’s residential Blue Box program, which has a 98% recovery rate for corrugated (according to the most recent pay-in-model information previously made available from Stewardship Ontario).
While we know efforts are underway to transition to a more circular economy for plastic packaging in Canada by groups like the CPP, PPEC is proud that paper packaging is one of Canada’s original circular economies.
I love fish. Plastic not so much. This puts me in good company, it seems, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who recently told the World Economic Forum that the “plastics issue” will be the main theme at the G7 leaders’ summit in Charlevoix, Quebec in June.
Trudeau’s announcement follows in the footsteps of Coca-Cola saying it intends to make bottles with 50% average recycled content by 2030 (12 years away). And Unilever calling for the consumer goods industry to step up its efforts to tackle the mounting challenge of ocean plastic waste and create a circular economy for plastics.
All good and stirring words. But how are they going to get there? Not using plastics in the first place is one option, of course. British frozen food retailer, Iceland, has just done that, committing to become the first major retailer globally to eliminate plastic packaging from all its own brand products by the end of 2023. But elimination aside, you need the most effective and efficient, not to mention the most “environmentally friendly” way to get plastics back. And what would that be?
Only 29% of plastics packaging is currently being recovered in Ontario’s multi-material Blue Box system. The Stewardship Ontario “recovery” rate for PET and HDPE bottles does the best of the plastics at 53%, followed by the mixed resins of “Other Plastics” at 32%, with plastic film lagging way behind at only 12 per cent. Nothing much has changed on the bottle front over the last 13 years of Blue Box EPR or “industry-pay” stewardship; the recovery rate for plastic bottles improving a paltry 3% over that time.
Is the answer throwing millions of dollars in promotion and education money at the good people of Ontario, to try and persuade them to increase the Blue Box plastics recovery rate from its current 29% to 50% or higher? It won’t work. Especially when there are no penalties for non-performance in the amended Blue Box program that Stewardship Ontario has passed on to the new Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority for approval. The plan indicates there will be a lot of talk about “problem materials” and maybe some research and development and “collaborative forums,” but no actual penalties for not performing.
So, what about the deposit option? Ontario is one of the few Canadian provinces not to have a full deposit/return system alongside its Blue Box. Traditionally, the Coke and Pepsi folks have been opposed to deposit schemes because they single out beverages, and the retailers have been opposed because they don’t want to become return-to-retail depots.
But maybe things are changing. Coca-Cola recently said it would consider “well-run” deposit systems. What exactly does that mean? Does it mean globally? Does it mean anything in the Ontario context? While those big questions remain unanswered, Coke is saying that it wants to get to a 50% recycled content average within 12 years. To do that you need recycled plastic feedstock, and a lot of it. Deposit schemes certainly provide that.
The recovery of plastic bottles and aluminum cans in Canada’s many provincial deposit/return programs is quite respectable. BC’s Encorp Pacific, for example, reports a 74% recovery rate for plastics and 82% for aluminum cans. In Ontario’s multi-material Blue Box, by comparison, the recovery rate for PET and HDPE bottles is 53% and aluminum food and beverage cans, a mere 42 per cent. (In fact, if you take out the non-PET (HDPE) from the bales, the real Ontario recycling rate is even lower. A direct aluminum comparison is a little tricky too. Deposit programs take only used beverage cans (UBCs). Non-deposit programs are more comprehensive, including cat food and other aluminum containers).
The plastic, steel, aluminum and glass industries may not say it publicly for fear of offending some of their major customers, but privately they are not at all opposed to deposit/return systems. And the reason is simple. They get far more material (economies of scale matter), and it’s in far better (less contaminated) condition. Quantity and quality count. On the other hand, deposit programs are known to be very expensive, with the transportation of light-weight, high-volume containers being a major cost.
A key question, of course, is what impact a deposit scheme would have on the major material remaining in the Blue Box. Paper today supplies 63% of the generated material, 75% of the recovered material, and 52% of Ontario Blue Box revenues. Basically, the Blue Box is a paper box. Would paper quality (and revenues) increase enough to make a difference? Maybe if the stewardship body (or bodies) kept pounding on the collectors to reduce contamination, it might have some impact.
Any supportive decision by Coca-Cola, Pepsi and the retailers would clearly boil down to economics and avoided costs. We estimate that to get plastic bottles alone to a 50% recovery rate under the current Blue Box system in Ontario would cost stewards around $185 million, based on reported costs and revenues.
If you threw those plastic bottles instead into a deposit/return scheme and added other containers and factored in the avoided costs of contamination for all materials at both collection and processing stages, plus increased revenues for better quality product, including perhaps paper, then a deposit/return system with the Blue Box for paper might make sense, maybe. But you would still need the Blue Box for non-deposit containers. In British Columbia, for example, it’s understood that about 25% of the Blue Box is plastic, glass, aseptic/polycoated containers and metal material that’s not on deposit.
There are so many variables in this discussion and competing objectives. Lots of fish hooks too.
The plastics industry is besieged on multiple fronts and widely depicted as the “archetypical eco-villain of the modern world,” according to the editor of Canadian Packaging magazine. He then latches onto an American Chemical Council study that purports to show how much worse the world would be environmentally if plastics were replaced by competing materials such as paper, glass and metal.
Whatever we say on this subject is bound to be construed by certain parties as biased and confrontational since we compete with our plastic colleagues on many fronts. The reality, however, is that many of our members have a foot in both camps, producing both paper and plastic packaging, the better to serve their customer base. And it’s not as if we, as paper, do not have some empathy for the current disrepute the plastics industry generally finds itself in. Remember the “forest wars” of the 1980s and 1990s and the dioxin threat? Paper was a dirty word.
What we do find difficult to digest, however, is the editor’s uncritical support for, and fulsome quotation from, the particular report he cites. This study, sponsored by the plastics industry, is far from being as “scientifically and empirically sound” as he claims. For starters, it looks only at two (just two) life cycle components (energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions). You won’t find anything here about air pollution, the sustainability of exploiting non-renewable oil and natural gas deposits, or the impact of plastic litter on marine life. So the study is not a complete life cycle analysis, it’s a partial one.
The authors acknowledge this. The study “does not include an expanded set of environmental indicators.” Nor does it “meet the ISO 14044 criteria for requiring a panel peer review.” Its conclusions, the authors add, are “not intended to be used as the basis for comparative environmental claims or purchasing decisions.”
So why are they being used publically for that very purpose? And why is Canadian Packaging repeating them unquestioningly as if to prove that plastics ain’t that bad? Plastics have their place. And some good things come in plastic. But let’s not confuse credible, complete, peer-reviewed life cycle research with what amounts to a questionable sales pitch aimed at denigrating competing materials.
Authors of this report acknowledge its limitations
I love fish. Plastic not so much. This puts me in good company, it seems, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who recently told the World Economic Forum that the “plastics issue” will be the main theme at the G7 leaders’ summit in Charlevoix, Quebec in June.
