By Jessica Zimbalatti, Associate Editor, PPI Europe, RISI
BRUSSELS,
Aug. 6, 2008 (RISI) -
Paper packaging makers may have been lulled into a false sense of security by an Ipsos poll published by PaperPlus last year indicating that 93% of shoppers consider paper to be the most ecologically sound packaging option. But they should bear in mind that, when it comes to plastic packaging, they’re facing a competitor that’s willing to spend time and money convincing shoppers, even in the face of absurdity, that it’s the more environmentally friendly choice.
For example, last Friday the BBC started an ongoing feature by Chris Jeavans about her attempt to go for a month without using plastic. Before she’d even started in earnest, Dick Searle, the head of the UK Packaging Federation, explained that plastic packaging was good because consumers are too undisciplined to eat food before it goes off. If he had anything to say about the UN Environment Programme estimate Jeavens quoted, about ‘46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean on Earth’, or about paper packaging alternatives, of course we didn’t get to hear it.
What’s more, before I could I watch the video on the BBC site featuring a take on Jeavans' project from Paul Davidson (the plastics sector manager of Waste & Resources Action Programme, who seemed to suggest she’d be doing more harm than good), I had to sit through a commercial for polymer-for-plastic producer Exxon describing how important the company feels the environment is.
Another example? You don’t need to look far to find lots of references to an 18-year-old life cycle analysis from Franklin and Associates. Commissioned by plastics industry trade group Council for Solid Waste Solutions, it touts the environmental benefits of plastic bags over paper, and it continues to be quoted in opinion-leading outlets. The Washington Post used it as a source last year and the Huffington Post used it last month. This is despite the vice president of Franklin and Associates admitting in 1990 that the study wasn’t particularly comprehensive, and despite a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report published just this year with the support of some paper sack actors, whose findings were as different as you might expect.
So much for plastic. What about paper? At such a critical time in terms of shoppers’ rising consciousness of environmental issues, and at a time when overcapacity and declining profit margins should be encouraging European paper packaging producers to look for any kind of added value they can get, it’s incredible that at conference after conference I hear loud complaining about what a pain accreditation schemes like the FSC or the PEFC are, not to mention transparency schemes like the WWF Paper Toolbox. I can’t believe the complaining producers don’t rush to take advantage of these indicators, some of which they can advertise on their own paperboard or paper sack medium and many of which are already widely trusted, to reinforce the public’s gut feeling that paper packaging is indeed the best environmental choice.
Really, I can’t understand why the whole paper packaging industry isn’t pressing its advantage by visibly working on its environmental practices like crazy. Especially now, when the competition’s comparative attractions are based on a misleading study published when people still listened to Vanilla Ice, and when the competition must try to explain to the BBC why, despite ‘a toxic plastic "soup" swilling around the middle of the North Pacific’, plastic packaging is still attractive.
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