Has COVID killed sustainable packaging?

Pre-pan­dem­ic, pack­ag­ing was on a roll. The glob­al mar­ket val­ue in 2019 was $917 bil­lion, accord­ing to research by Smithers, with fore­casts it would top the one-tril­lion mark by 2024.

As the cli­mate emer­gency loomed large in the minds of con­sumers, num­bers for envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble options were strong too. A YouGov sur­vey last year found half of UK shop­pers were will­ing to pay more for sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing.

So how has the coro­n­avirus changed the game?

The packaging industry and COVID-19

In gen­er­al, accord­ing to Nicholas Mock­ett, part­ner at Moor­gate Cap­i­tal, most pack­ag­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers have seen strong sales dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, which augurs well for fund­ing and finance.

“Investors do not invest if there is no prospect of a return on invest­ment. For­tu­nate­ly for pack­ag­ing, the vital role it plays in sup­ply chains, as evi­denced by the robust per­for­mance dur­ing COVID-19, sug­gests investor appetite will be sus­tained,” he says.

Inevitably, there have been win­ners and losers. It has been boom time for ecom­merce, includ­ing the “recom­merce” mar­ket for pre­vi­ous­ly owned, new or used goods, plus online shop­ping and direct-to-con­sumer mod­els. Demand for med­ical pack­ag­ing is atyp­i­cal­ly high, for obvi­ous rea­sons, plus food pro­vi­sion for peo­ple stay­ing home to eat, espe­cial­ly take­away meals, has seen a spike in unit sales.

All these uplifts in end-user demand bring with them oppor­tu­ni­ties for tran­sit pack­ag­ing and whole­sale busi­ness hap­pen­ing along the sup­ply chain.

On the down­side, vol­umes in heav­i­ly impact­ed mar­ket sec­tors, such as air trav­el, tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty, plus some high street retail, notably fash­ion, have sad­ly been hit hard.

Where then does this leave sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing? The more eco-con­scious end of the gen­er­al con­sumer mar­ket has held up sur­pris­ing­ly well, even advanced in some cas­es.

Balance the equation and control the cost

Data from more than 40,000 con­sumers in 23 coun­tries, col­lect­ed by glob­al intel­li­gence plat­form Street­bees, reveals 35 per cent of peo­ple world­wide have changed their sus­tain­abil­i­ty habits, since the end of May, for the bet­ter.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the ques­tion of hygiene shot up the con­sumer agen­da, espe­cial­ly in the ear­ly days of lock­down when fears about the virus sur­viv­ing on mate­ri­als and sur­faces height­ened the risk fac­tor asso­ci­at­ed with any­thing arriv­ing at your door.

In response, a new logis­tics lan­guage emerged, explains Amelia Dales, com­mer­cial direc­tor at Garçon Wines. “Con­tact­less deliv­ery is now a term that has become part of our vocab­u­lary and has allowed many who have had to self-iso­late to access every­day house­hold essen­tials safe­ly.”

Sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing pio­neers able to adapt to these new cri­te­ria are pros­per­ing, includ­ing Garçon Wines that has seen unprece­dent­ed demand for its con­tact­less sup­ply of cli­mate and let­ter­box-friend­ly flat wine bot­tles.

“COVID-19 has rede­fined sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” says Kaushal Shah, founder and chief exec­u­tive of sus­tain­able papers spe­cial­ist envoPAP. Fun­da­men­tal­ly, though, the sce­nario remains sim­ple. “Con­sumers’ cur­rent top pri­or­i­ties are stay­ing healthy and spend­ing as lit­tle as pos­si­ble. The real chal­lenge is to deliv­er a tru­ly sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing prod­uct that ticks both box­es,” adds Shah.

The evi­dence from waste man­age­ment is also that the pan­dem­ic has forced pack­ag­ing com­pa­nies to speed up deci­sions on sus­tain­able solu­tions and bol­ster their green cre­den­tials. But again this view car­ries a caveat, accord­ing to Roger Wright, waste strat­e­gy and pack­ag­ing man­ag­er at Bif­fa.

“Hygiene and sus­tain­abil­i­ty are by no means mutu­al­ly exclu­sive; the big­ger chal­lenge for busi­ness­es will be con­trol­ling costs,” he says.

Hygiene, single-use plastics and reusable packaging

Safe­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty are not always an easy match though. Terms such as “sin­gle use” and “plas­tic” have become red-flag badges of dis­hon­our for a Blue Plan­et gen­er­a­tion of shop­pers.

The fear among envi­ron­men­tal­ists is that a reac­tionary shift back to a more risk-averse mind­set post-COVID might see more pack­ag­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly plas­tic, not less, with the excess mean­ing more resource con­sump­tion, CO2 and waste, and less sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Even with sin­gle-use solu­tions designed to assuage hygiene con­cerns, how­ev­er, there are still ways to lev­el up the safe­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty equa­tion a lit­tle, for instance by opti­mis­ing use of recy­cled con­tent, says Dales. “Com­pa­nies that sur­vive this chal­leng­ing decade will man­age to bal­ance these ele­ments suf­fi­cient­ly, but those that want to excel should lead from a ‘sus­tain­abil­i­ty-first’ per­spec­tive to have the great­est pos­i­tive impact and odds of suc­cess,” she says.

Do consumers want sustainable packaging?

Fol­low­ing the upheavals of lock­down, the pack­ag­ing indus­try is also deal­ing with dis­rup­tion of a dif­fer­ent kind as restric­tions ease. So, for instance, pubs and bars reopen­ing have thrown up new pack­ag­ing-relat­ed changes in con­sumer behav­iour, moti­vat­ed by hygiene con­sid­er­a­tions, says Adri­an Cur­ry, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Encirc, a mar­ket leader in con­tain­er glass.

“Our research with YouGov showed peo­ple choos­ing glass bot­tles over pint glass­es. Some 60 per cent of UK adults say they’re more cau­tious about drink­ing from reusable glass­es due to fears around con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and four in ten peo­ple are more like­ly to choose glass-bot­tled bev­er­ages than before lock­down,” says Cur­ry.

By con­trast, anoth­er exam­ple of a poten­tial trade-off between safe­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty sees con­sumers want­i­ng cof­fee shops to resume serv­ing in reusable cups, despite hygiene issues.

Fur­ther­more, in a sign of con­fi­dence in sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing return­ing, Ter­ra­Cy­cle launched its zero-waste refill­able UK shop­ping pilot, in July, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Tesco.

With exist­ing oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States and France, Loop had delayed its orig­i­nal start date due to COVID, but is now press­ing ahead, with major brands, from Heinz to Nivea, signed up.

Reusables also received a sig­nif­i­cant show of sup­port when more than 125 health experts from 19 coun­tries signed a state­ment with Green­peace USA assur­ing retail­ers and con­sumers such pack­ag­ing is safe dur­ing COVID-19.

Ulti­mate­ly, then, the mes­sage from clients is sus­tain­abil­i­ty will be the num­ber-one pri­or­i­ty for the future of pack­ag­ing, even or per­haps espe­cial­ly, in a post-pan­dem­ic world, says Dr Tim Brek­er, co-founder and man­ag­ing direc­tor of reusable pack­ag­ing-as-a-ser­vice pio­neer VYTAL. “Reusable pack­ag­ing and cir­cu­lar-econ­o­my mod­els are increas­ing in impor­tance. Hygiene is a giv­en, where­as sus­tain­abil­i­ty is a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing cri­te­ri­on for con­sumers.”