Packaging with Intelligence
Cooperation and technologies for universal packaging without plastic waste
By Cheryl E. Harrison
The clock on plastic waste is ticking. Last week, a bold commitment was made affecting the packaging industry in the United States – to curb plastic waste by 2025.
Within 42 months, all plastic packaging produced is mandated to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Within eight years, at least half of all plastic packaging in the USA must be either recycled or composted.
Political influencers, legislators, sustainability leaders, and officers in corporate boardrooms have been anxiously wrestling with tug-o-war scenarios to achieve imperative changes. Most concerning is a plastic waste volume in the U.S. exceeding all other countries, with a deplorable plastic recycling rate of less than 10%.
How did we get here? The U.S. has been producing vast quantities of plastic packaging, with failed measures in place to regulate packaging use or proper, unified disposal management.
Fractured strategies within the industry have not yielded any comprehensive, standardized, or scalable solutions. With an expectation of meeting anticipated production growth, ten of the world’s largest plastic manufacturing culprits and many Fortune 500 companies are scrambling. They promise to deliver viable plastic alternatives while amplifying their own “greener” strategies. In truth, most plastic production in the U.S. is still driven by corporate valuation pressures to reach increasing plastic film production volumes and deliver package procurement commitments based on film types that are “tried and true”. Preferred are the non-renewable, virgin fossil-fuel plastics which are cheaper and reliable. Historically, these companies lobbied against the inevitable need for change.
In recent years, a few dozen risk-taking plastic film manufacturers accelerated development yielding an array of potentially promising new “boutique” plastics and new polymer films. Among them are polymers made from renewable, non-petroleum, bio-based feedstocks, and hybrid films that incorporate recycled plastic materials. Some responsibly sourced compostable films are fast emerging with proven viability for certain package types but face intense challenges in the existing recycling processes. Innovative polymer chemistry alternatives for plastics are slowly emerging into the value chain. However, these specialty polymer films are costly to commercialize even after immense investments by their entrepreneurial producers. Prior testing is required to comply with stringent performance variables, microplastic assessments, and complicated, unregulated, inconsistent sustainability certifications.
Despite a rising consumer preference for purchasing goods with eco-friendly packaging, the largest plastics manufacturers contend that “profitable” plastic production does not equate to scaling new, more sustainable alternatives.
The result: The world’s ‘business as usual’ plastic production now translates to 300 million tons of plastic waste each year, almost the equivalent combined weight of the entire human population on earth.
For over a decade, statewide legislators in the U.S. proposed various new taxes and fines for plastic waste generation, but few took hold. These policies were designed to shift the burden of plastic waste disposal, placing the financial responsibility on the brand companies and producers of packaged products, instead of public municipalities and local recycling centers. Following in the footsteps of Europe’s implemented “Extended Producer Responsibility” (EPR) model, initial sanctions are similarly being introduced in the U.S.
This fast-emerging waste responsibility model could be the advent of a major new nationwide plastic policy in the U.S. where producers are held 100% financially responsible for the collection and clean-up costs of the volumes of plastic that they place into the market. When implemented, the model incentivizes an overhaul of package remanufacturing with a wishful result to self-report higher packaging collection rates across product brands. If nationally instated, EPR could help to offset the billions of dollars needed for environmental clean-up and municipal plastic recovery burdens. Its intention is to fund future investments in waste recovery systems, increase the number of waste processing facilities and expand recycling infrastructure. Alongside complex “tracking-the-culprit” strategies is a promise to achieve a “zero-waste” future – but with a ballooning price tag.
There is no doubt that the plastics industry is facing an unruly, mired conundrum of unresolved, expensive priorities at every point of the plastics “value” chain – ultimately paid for by-product purchases of well-intentioned, “packaging-perplexed” consumers.
A year ago, an uncommon collaboration among the industry’s competitors, collaborators, and decision-makers was organized by a newly formed US Plastics Pact. A growing number of its participant members represent the plastics and packaging supply chain actors including multinational brand companies, packaging producers and manufacturers, retailers, municipal recycling centers, investors, non-profit policymakers, environmentalists, researchers, plastic materials producers, technologists, and product manufacturers – about ninety-eight industry stakeholders in total. Noted is that the ten largest polymer producers in the U.S., critical to the conversation, have been absent from joining the member list.
The aspirational goal of the US Plastics Pact initiated a master plan for plastic packaging – one that followed the guiding principles of the circular economy. It was an accelerated commitment to be implemented nationwide, created as a rallying cry to align the plastics industry. The final determination was a “roadmap” with goals and milestones so that environmental hazards from “end of life” plastic packaging would divert away from rising streams of harmful “waste”.
Included were key mandates and a call to action announced June 2021 for the plastics and packaging industry:
1. Define new goals and criteria to align the packaging industry
2. Develop packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable
3. Create action plans to either recycle or compost plastic packaging
4. Manufacture plastics made from recycled or bio-based content
As a participating member of the US Plastics Pact, I wondered how these ambitious expectations would succeed.
Would it be realistic to conclude that America’s plastic packaging waste calamity would be reduced substantially through major investments in recycling infrastructure? Is it possible to encourage reverse vending machines and deposit-return schemes at scale? How could recycling become more profitable? Are there budgets available for more waste collection trucks, with inexpensive ways to modernize and construct many more recycling centers? How can we swiftly align to enact nationwide changes, among so many divergent interests?
Achieving targeted goals for reducing plastic waste for a circular economy is critical and very well intended, but the model to achieve these goals in practice at a sufficiently large scale, are still aspirational. Even if volumes for waste sorting and recycling in the U.S. increased exponentially, due to better consumer awareness and more recycling infrastructure, there are still inherent choke points once plastic packages reach the recycling center gate.
I initially thought most Recycling Centers in the U.S. could scale a pathway to recycling and composting greater volumes of plastic packaging waste. But they can’t.
With current recycling methods, most of the plastic waste is mixed with other loose materials and contaminated waste. Therefore, a large percentage of plastic packages cannot be sorted, are not able to be efficiently processed, separated, and cleaned, and have no after-market economic value. Municipal waste processing centers across the U.S. struggle to handle processing of a typical 30 tons of waste per hour. Commonly, these are single waste streams of an unsorted mix of cardboard, glass, aluminum, paper, steel, and tin cans, used durable goods and mixed plastics of all kinds. Only a small fraction of the plastics collected can be recycled in practice for re-use or upcycle value. Frequently, single-use, thin plastic films and lightweight plastic bags are caught in the large drum sorters, shutting down the conveyors and processing mechanisms for hours. Additionally, proper recycling requires large amounts of water for clean rinsing – a scarce and expensive resource.
“Responsible composting” of packaging is defined as a key objective within the goals of the US Plastics Pact. However, using current collection and recycling systems, bio-based compostable films and paper packages will ultimately become mixed together with all other contaminated plastic packaging types. It is impossible to cost-effectively sort out the sustainable bio-based films in the recycling process to create a viable biomass compost used for clean energy or safe fertilizers. Given the capacities of recycling centers in the U.S., widespread adoption to process more compostable, bio-based plastic films will not be the panacea to reduce fast-increasing packaging waste streams.
Recycling centers already face tall hurdles to get rid of incoming loose plastics as rapidly as possible. Despite good intentions, higher volumes of mixed recycled materials will undoubtedly create more non-recyclable residues. This scenario equates to more plastic diverted at faster rates to landfills, incineration or other non-traceable discard streams.
The US Plastics Pact’s roadmap for recycling, composting, and reusing is not a straightforward task. Investments made without comprehensive solutions that align and integrate the entire complex system of plastics are unlikely to succeed. Ambitious changes are critically important, but they must be made with real-time intelligence, metrics, standardized industry controls, and accurate measurements and transparency.
Upon this conclusion, I turned to a more forward-thinking, integrated systems approach, weaving together existing technologies of what could be possible. I began to consider plastic packages designed differently – with intelligence!
First, packages are designed with the intention of their end processing journey. These packages are created to optimize their after-use and re-use, upcycle value. They are manufactured from only one mono-material, without applied labels for ease of pre-sorting. They are also conceived for their consumer convenience, performance benefits, ease of use, and preferred user experience. They are designed to use fewer film materials, and to be adaptive in size, shape, and functionality. They add incremental value through each step of their supply chain from birth to end of life and rebirth. They transform effectively into other valuable new molecules, polymers, packages, or as plastic materials or durable products at a large scale.
Intelligent packaging is “smart”, connected to the Internet of Things. Artificial Intelligence guides its journey with data collection and supply chain transparency. In this way, a package delivers its purpose, not only to contain the goods that it holds but also to serve as a digital object, an active, dynamic transmitter of information, connected to blockchain-enabled data.
The package guides its own journey. It transmits information of its location, its molecular film-type composition, the origin of its package life, its destiny, and its optimal re-use opportunity.
How is this possible?
When the packaging film is first manufactured and procured, the package is printed with embedded digital tags and invisible watermarks. Each package contains unique, scannable, interoperable information.
Data transmitted from each package connects with localized sensors along its journey. Interactive data includes the source manufacturer of the plastic film, type of plastic with technical details, and authenticity certifications. The package carries with it essential details about the package’s contents, ingredients, packing date, weight, and retail code numbers. Applied labels, that typically add expense and hinder the recycling process, are eliminated altogether.
Each package exchanges real-time data through a cloud-based network which aggregates its dynamic footprint along its chain. Future information such as its retail destination and anticipated delivery time is tracked. Changing temperature conditions affecting product quality, pathogen detection, and sustainability impacts throughout its supply chain are collected and monitored. The intelligent package offers companies, distributors, and retailers dynamic, demand-driven production, market pricing, and GPS location points for each of their products to more precisely gauge both material production and product distribution based on actual market sales, thereby maximizing efficiencies.
This universal package is inherently multi-use, made of only one plastic material type. It is designed to eliminate all waste – for products and packaging.
Nano-tracking is enabled by a “smart” and clean design, appealing to all consumers. Each plastic package has a magical, “EasyPop®” air bubble embedded, which serves as a data transmitting beacon. The consumer immediately recognizes the EasyPop® air bubble within a sleek, streamlined package of nearly any shape or size. EasyPop® is widely adapted for liquids, beverages, food products, consumer goods and most personal care products and for packaging many household goods. Regardless of its brand or product, the EasyPop™ package is fully traceable, sustainable, and eco-friendly – ready to purchase, easy to use and re-use, to recycle, and eventually to upcycle, flourishing its “second life” role.
This intelligent package features valuable consumer product information, instructions for use in any language, and a digital label embedded within the polymer film. EasyPop® offers interactive capabilities with mobile devices and valuable, personalized multimedia experiences. The package delivers customized consumer preferences while transmitting its location and point of use. Once its magic air bubble is popped open, the package’s safe seal is easily opened. What reveals for the customer is timely or pertinent information from its digital label about product shelf life, use instructions, and marketing promotions, allowing the package to interact with local devices and “smart appliances”. EasyPop® is distinguished by its appealing “pop” sound to open, its ease of ergonomic use to dispense, and its memorable, personalized, interactive, and enjoyable experience.
Once used and disposed of, EasyPop® packages are sorted in the home, public spaces, facility complexes or workplaces. The discard system is a simple, cost-efficient sorting compactor appliance, streamlined with internal sensors that rapidly classify, clean, dry, flatten and store the empty used packages uniformly into small CleanPack™ bricks. Customers receive instant e-wallet credits when they properly recycle their used package. Customers are rewarded each time they locally pre-sort and recycle.
Brand companies promptly receive a data reporting credit, that their branded product package has been properly disposed into a value-based circular recycling stream. These universal recycling credits will offset Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fines and tax liabilities for any brand company or plastic producer, while offering direct data feedback for gathering accurate metrics for recycling data.
Deep inside the compacting appliance, each of the CleanPack™ bricks is automatically formed. Each brick is composed of compatible pre-sorted plastic film materials, all made of a compatible mono-material, tightly compacted for cost-efficient collection. Prepared for the next journey of their second life, the bricks are ready for efficient processing, remarketing, and upcycling. The compacted bricks intensify their own transmission data that carries its polymer type “Profile ID”. This data facilitates the high-volume robotic collection, sorting, and swift processing of the plastic bricks at the local recycling center.
An advantage for the recycling center is that each CleanPack™ brick can bond itself with other similar film types in adjacent plastic waste streams using low-cost sensors placed along plastic processing conveyors. Plastic flow tracking allows both consumers and brand companies to receive additional recycling credits. It also rewards the recyclers and processors to make significant profits on aggregated pre-sorted plastics from bundling “like-kind” plastic films.
Re-market buyers of plastics, polymer feedstocks, and resins have access to clean, pure recycled plastic bales which bring optimal value from reuse plastics when converted into fresh new polymers and resins. Compostable films with food contamination are efficiently sorted into certified biowaste for clean bioenergy and bio-waste conversion. All other pre-sorted plastics flow to Advanced Recycling processing centers producing specialty resins to make new plastics from thermo heating or molecular chemical conversion. These second lifestreams may also be used to create clean energy – or to generate valued by-products and raw materials used for industry, manufacturing, or construction.
EasyPop® and CleanPack™ design technologies require substantial shifts among all industry and supply chain sectors, significant commitments by brand companies and packaging manufacturers to adapt to a new, universal system for plastic packaging. This next-generation system for plastics involves cooperation from all actors within the extended value chain. Consistent, nationwide policy changes from governments, municipalities, and recycling centers must align. When implemented, prompt data feedback from the dynamic supply chain facilitates all integrated systems, to track, monitor, and achieve these sustainable outcomes.
With industry-wide cooperation with a bold, broad vision, consumers are in the driver’s seat to help implement EasyPop® and CleanPack™ as an intelligent, more eco-friendly solution to mitigate and eliminate plastic waste. Consumers making sustainable purchase choices, also unleash the potential value of each package they purchase; they are rewarded for adopting more effective waste-saving actions.
Intelligent technologies existing today can empower positive changes to benefit the plastic packaging value chain while reducing increased volumes of plastic waste flows which inevitably cause more landfilled waste, toxic emissions, and environmental litter. With cooperation and prompt intelligent actions, I believe that we can set forth a rosier future, not only for the packaging industry but importantly for the well-being of our planet.
The U.S. continues to throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour – 42,000 per minute.
We are already out of time.
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The author, Cheryl E. Harrison is a Senior Director of PopPack LLC, Activator Member of the US Plastics Pact, and member of AIPIA (Active & Intelligent Packaging Industry Assoc.). PopPack is a design-technology company in San Francisco, creating breakthrough commercial packaging alternatives to “design-out” packaging material waste. These packaging solutions offer positive, convenient experiences for consumers, with increased value for both brand companies and packaging producers who are committed to circular economy goals. PopPack’s prototype development, commercial production, and commercial licensing contracts are fulfilled through its operations in the USA and the Netherlands. www.poppack.com, www.viviaventures.nl EasyPop®, and CleanPack™ are trademarks of PopPack LLC. The ideas and concepts shared in this article are those of the author.
© 2021