Time for talk to move on from ‘greenwash’

14 March 2012

The unpleasant arrival of economic reality in 2008/9 has brought environmental issues into sharp focus in the last couple of years. Can a competition-based, global system afford to be ‘green’? And can one region on its own make changes likely to lead to higher costs being passed on to consumers, at a faster rate than other players in the world economy?

At the easyFairs Packaging Innovations show at the Birmingham NEC, 29 Feb-1 March, there was evidence that the time for navel-gazing over such issues is over, with open debate concerning a layer of “greenwash” that has developed around the environmental debate, including in packaging – more hindrance than help is the feeling. And what do all the various logos and numbers actually mean? People in the industry now appear to feel more secure in going public with their doubts and alternative viewpoints.

In his presentation ‘Compostable packaging – myth or reality?’, Walki technical services manager Steve Pye voiced his concerns over the impression given to the community at large by an industry labelling products with claims that they can be composted, if they don’t then actually do what they say they will – whether due to not being processed in the appropriate way, or to being combined with other, non-compostable products. “End of life has to be designed in, and that can only be done with the right choice of raw materials,” said Pye.

The Big Packaging Debate, ‘Sustainable packaging: saving the planet or costing the earth’, touched on the question of what ‘sustainability’ actually means. Not a lot, according to journalist Tom Heap, on the panel, who said it was at the top of his list of banned words, meaning so many things to different people, even within the environmental sphere: “It fogs, rather than clarifies the debate,” he said.

It would be perverse to argue against the benefits of the general concept of a ‘low carbon’ economy. And clearly at the heart of sustainability lies the imperative to use resources as efficiently as possible – as Sainsbury’s head of packaging and design Stuart Lendrum put it: “Not having losses within the system”. In the quest for solutions in how to communicate what it all means to the consumer, however, perhaps only one thing is certain: there’s a lot more debate to be had.

David Longfield,

Deputy Editor


David Longfield



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