Strike Out Hunger
William V. Hickey, President and CEO, Sealed Air Corp.
Most of us have been brought up not to waste food. When I was growing up, nothing went to waste in our house. If it wasn't eaten it was jarred, pickled or dried. But even with good intentions such as these, the world remains a very wasteful place. Some studies suggest that as much as 50% of the world' annual food production – hundreds of millions of tons – is thrown out or goes to waste. Amid this waste, according to a recent report by the United Nations, more than 1 billion in the world suffer from hunger every day – that's nearly 1 in every 7 people on the planet.
In more developed countries, food waste is pervasive throughout the entire supply chain. Food either goes un-sold, is poorly handled, the portions are too large, or it is thrown out after going bad in someone's refrigerator. In fact, as much as 33% of food waste in developed countries is at the consumer level. And if you wonder how this can make a difference to those in need, consider this – 5% of the food scraps thrown away by Americans could feed 4 million people each day.
Obviously, the issue of food waste becomes more complex in less developed countries where modern food production systems do not exist. In Africa, chronic hunger is not only a result of a shortage of food, but insufficient access to safe, quality foods due to inadequate transportation, packaging or storage.
What's more, food waste not only represents food that could have been eaten by someone who is hungry. It represents a wasteful use of resources – the fertilizers, processing and energy needed to produce, transport and store food. While most people assume food is harmless to the environment because it biodegrades, the reality is that when food rots, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas. Today, landfills produce 34% of all methane emissions in the U.S. – a gas that is 20 times more damaging to the environment than CO2. According to the U.S. EPA, food waste has ten times the environmental impact of packaging waste.
Food waste devastates individuals, economies and the environment. So what role business and individuals play in reducing waste and preventing hunger?
In developed countries, we need to continue our tradition of developing technologies that extend the freshness and shelf life of food while also educating food producers, retailers and consumers on how packaging is not a source of waste but rather, that it can in fact prevent it. Food packaging can extend the shelf life of fresh food for weeks, reduce the amount of food lost during transport and reduce waste in homes. For example, food packaging helps keep meat "fresh" for up to 14 days versus just two-to-three days without packaging. A pre-made salad bought at the supermarket reduces purchase volume by 11 times, can be produced at 4 times less the cost and generates 5-10 times less waste.
In less developed countries, only through public and private partnerships, can we attack chronic hunger and food waste by strengthening governments' commitment and capacity to act against hunger; improving nutrition through fortified products and consumer education, particularly for mothers and young children; and utilizing our most potent weapon – the world's technology and knowledge base. All businesses have the responsibility and capability to work together to improve food value chains – from production, processing and packaging to retailing and marketing – to increase food supplies, nutrition and incomes in hungry regions.
As individuals, we all have the responsibility to do our part at home and at work by being conscious of food waste. We need to be smarter shoppers and conscious of expiration dates. We need to be conscious of the portions of food we prepare so as to not produce an over-abundance of leftovers that wind up in the trash. And we need to be more resourceful with food that is leftover. You may not want to eat a banana that has turned slightly brown and softened, but that banana could still be used in making bread.
We have never lived in a time when food has been in more abundance. As a whole, the world is getting wealthier and producing more than enough food to feed the planet. So the question is not "can we" adequately feed the world's people, it's "will we".
Putting an end to global hunger and the preservation of our planet are two of the world's greatest challenges and we all need to do more. Reducing the amount of food that each of us wastes is an important step in the right direction.
Innovators at the Ready – Reducing The Amount of Food We Waste At Home
It is estimated that food waste is the second largest component of discarded waste (after yard waste and followed by paper). Of that waste, it is estimated that nearly a third comes from the consumer and in the home.
Where does it come from? The three largest contributors to food waste in the home are:
- Leftovers portions of meals because the serving size was too large
- Trimmings that come from food preparation
- Food that expired in a person's refrigerator
Molded bread, squishy cucumbers, expired milk and butter are all headed for the garbage can in homes across the world.
For decades, Sealed Air's Cryovac food packaging products have helped combat food waste with technologies that extend freshness through the entire supply chain. This includes pioneering frozen turkey packaging in the 1940s and leveraging modern protective barrier, modified atmosphere and vacuum packaging to extend shelf life by up to four weeks.
But today, the Company's focus on innovation has extended to create products that reduce food waste in the home – primarily in the area of re-sealable packages which extends the refrigerator life of fresh food, single-portion ready-to-eat meals which help eliminate the amount of discarded leftovers and pre-made meals which reduce waste during preparation.
Consider this: A pre-made salad bought at the supermarket reduces purchase volume by 11 times, can be produced at 4 times less the cost and generates 5-10 times less waste because consumers will not be discarding trimmings and ingredients that were purchased in excess.
Shelf-Life Matters
Sometimes more packaging can be better for the environment than less.
Throughout modern food supply systems, all of the links in the supply chain are constantly working toward improving efficiencies—from global food production, processing and distribution to retailing—not only to reduce costs and protect profits, but also to promote a sustainable food supply chain.
Largely unrecognized is the contribution packaging makes to improving the efficiency of the food supply chain. Despite sometimes being criticized by the consumer, packaging prevents food and all of the resources that went into its production from being wasted before consumer purchase.
For example, case-ready packaging can extend the shelf life of fresh meat by several weeks and can reduce the amount of food that goes unsold on retail shelves. It does this not only by keeping meat fresh longer and preventing leaks, but also by preserving the "fresh look" of meat so it remains appealing for consumers.
In April 2008, the Intermarché group adopted the new Cryovac® Mirabella package across their case-ready retail space and SVA converted their packaging lines to accommodate the selection. In addition to the numerous benefits that helped increase sales by 15%, the use of the Mirabella package reduced in-store product waste by 50% as the technology minimized meat discoloration.
"The key to reducing waste from production to retail is what we call 'value chain collaboration,'" said Jim Mize. "We know that we can have a significant impact on improving the sustainability of the food supply chain and save our customers money when we are willing to exchange information with select partners to make the most of our combined knowledge."
The extension of shelf life is a benefit not only in less shrinkage at retail, but also in allowing food to be transported over longer distances. This can help improve the sustainability of the food supply chain and alleviate some of the impact of feed prices, as packaging can help move fresh meat from areas where supply is high and prices low to areas that may be experiencing higher priced markets.
Said Mize, "If you have a kilo of meat and you do not pack¬age it properly, the negative impact upon the environment of losing a kilo of meat compared to 30 grams of plastic is a dramatic trade-off to the worst for the environment."
And the extent to which packaging improves shelf life goes beyond meat. Dairy and fresh vegetables can last up to two to three weeks longer with proper packaging.
Mize concluded, "It is clear that we have to move sus¬tainable thinking of our industry beyond that of mate¬rials. While an important focus for us is producing packaging that is made from renewable materials or can be composted, we must put more emphasis on the entire life cycle of a package and its content. Our goal is to always find a way to maximize protection while reduc¬ing the amount of materials used, but we can only do so when we know we will not sacrifice performance."
Oftentimes, the life cycle analysis will show customers that loss, waste or damage is more negative to the environment than the additional impact 30 or 50 grams of a packaging material might have.
SEALED AIR POSITION ON OXO-DEGRADABLE TECHNOLOGY
The confusion over oxo-degradable technology is not only giving people a false sense of progress on their environmental initiatives, it is possibly deterring them from other more necessary programs that produce greater environmental benefits, such as recycling and source reduction.
The rapidly growing demand for products with reduced environmental impact has caused growing confusion on the part of customers, retailers and consumers about "what is green", "what green means" and "what brings true environmental value". This is particularly true when it comes to understanding claims of biodegradability and degradability.
This situation stems largely from products that do not produce the environmental benefits as expected, yet make claims where no scientifically based test data or promotion standards exist. This is particularly true for materials that claim degradability, but are more often (and possibly more accurately) described as 'oxo-biodegradable' or 'oxo-degradable' – meaning that materials will completely biodegrade naturally in the environment to carbon dioxide and water.
Oxo-degradable technology was first developed in the 1970s using chemical additives to accelerate the degradation of common plastics such as polyethylene when exposed to air and sunlight. When first developed this application of degradability was considered a possible solution for plastic products that were not collected and often ended up as litter, such as six-pack beverage rings. The goal was to cause this litter to embrittle when discarded onto the ground, thereby reducing harm to birds and other animals. Despite being available for decades, uncertainty and skepticism are increasing about the length of time it will take for a plastic to degrade as well as is the misconception that the degradation process will work in modern, managed landfill conditions – which is a product feature several companies are claiming as true today.
Recently, there has been mounting interest in expanding the application for oxo-degradable technology to other applications. Unfortunately, much of this interest has been generated by unproven claims stating the technology will degrade plastics in landfills in short periods of times. In fact, the scientific community today is in general agreement that plastic with oxo-degradability additives does NOT degrade in landfills in any reasonable time frame, because of a lack of oxygen and moisture necessary for the additive to work. Materials degrade very slowly, if at all, in a landfill. This is because modern landfills are designed, according to law, to keep out sunlight, air and moisture. This helps prevent pollutants from the garbage from getting into the air and drinking water, and slows the decomposition of the trash. Certain buyers and sellers of additives are careful not to make any claims about degradability in landfills, but rather report laboratory testing results done in a controlled environment. This creates confusion because the test results do not reflect the real world end-of-life scenario for the product. Regulatory agencies have instituted actions against some suppliers for misleading claims regarding the attributes of oxo-degradable products.
In short, the confusion over oxo-degradable technology is not only giving people a false sense of progress on their environmental initiatives, it is possibly deterring them from other more necessary programs that produce greater environmental benefits, such as recycling and source reduction.
We believe it is important that our customers and the general consumer understand the environmental attributes of products that we offer and that our environmental claims are fully supported by verifiable data. Without scientific evidence supporting the existing claims, we believe the responsible thing to do is to avoid the use of oxo-degradable additives in our products for environmental purposes. It is more practical and will yield greater positive results if we continue to focus our research and development efforts in more promising environmental areas, such as promoting recycling and reuse, reducing the energy use of our customers, exploring raw materials alternatives and producing products using fewer materials.
We are technically capable of producing products that incorporate oxo-degradable features; however we want our customers and end users to fully understand the performance characteristics of those products. We know our customers want to make the right, most informed environmental decisions, and we will remain committed to working collaboratively with them on initiatives that truly make a difference.
Closing the Loop through Recycling: a Key Strategy for Enhancing Supply Chain Sustainability
Ronald Cotterman, Ph.D.Executive Director, Sustainability Sealed Air Corporation
An increasing number of companies have embraced sustainability as an important element of their current business practices and future business strategies. Sustainability is a term that describes the actions companies can take to support the needs of today in a way that will support those of generations to come. Sustainability relies on developing thinking and processes to achieve economic growth while allowing social development and environmental preservation.
Enhancing the sustainability of supply chains involves the use of life cycle thinking to design products that are both efficient and effective. In a product life cycle, products pass from stage to stage within a supply chain. The life cycle is completed by connecting the last stage back to the beginning by recovering products following use. This ability of products to cycle through a loop, called "closing the loop", is a key strategy for enhancing sustainability. The net result is that by engineering closed loop supply chains, businesses produce economic value and social benefits while minimizing environmental impacts.
When applied to packaging, "closing the loop" means that packaging will be used to fulfill its primary purpose of delivering products to consumers without spoilage or damage but, at the end of that function, the packaging can then be recovered and converted into new packaging, other useful materials or energy. Plastic packaging, in particular, is well suited to recovery due to the ability of many types of plastics to be reprocessed and recycled at the end of their use into other useful forms.
Benefits of Recycling
"Closing the loop" on plastics produces multiple benefits. Recovery and reuse of plastics reduces the amount of natural resources that are needed to manufacture new products. In addition, recycling can greatly reduce or eliminate the amount of material that goes to landfill following use. Finally, the recycling of many plastics requires significantly less energy and reduces the carbon footprint compared to production using virgin materials.
A study published by Franklin Associates earlier this year estimates that it requires 3.7 MM Btu to recycle 1000 pounds of high density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles. This energy is only 12% of the energy required to produce HDPE bottles made from virgin resin. In terms of greenhouse gases, the same report estimates the carbon footprint to recycle HDPE resin is 0.6 lb of carbon dioxide equivalents, or roughly one third of the carbon footprint required to produce products from virgin HDPE.
Recycling Rates
The success rate of "closing the loop" on plastics is reflected in recycling statistics. In the U.S., the amount of materials recycled from residential, commercial and institutional sources is reported annually by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to the EPA, 1.73 million tons, or 13.2% of plastic packaging waste was recycled in 2008. This is made up of a number of plastic types. The principal recycled plastics are PET (23%), HDPE (14%) and low density polyethylenes (10%).
Despite the ability of many plastics to be recycled, the infrastructure to collect, sort and recover plastics following consumer use is limited. Post-consumer recycling of plastics is primarily limited to bottles made from either PET or HDPE. Furthermore, consumer participation in recycling in the US is still developing. Although over 80% of U.S. households have access to plastics recycling, primarily for PET and HDPE containers, recycling rates are relatively low. The EPA reports recycling rates in 2008 for HDPE milk and water bottles at 29.3% and for PET bottles and jars at 27.2%.
In parallel to efforts by municipalities to recycle post-consumer plastics, many businesses are working to develop private networks to recover and recycle plastic materials that have not yet reached the consumer. These materials, in the form of byproducts or scraps, are referred to as "pre-consumer" recycle and represent an important source of recycled material for remanufacture into useful products. The challenge is to design efficient recovery methods that can compete cost-effectively against production using virgin materials. In addition, the use of recycle should not compromise the performance or safety of packaging materials. This is an area where companies are actively working to develop recycle-containing products that can be manufactured efficiently and meet the application requirements of the supply chain.
Communicating Recycling
Communicating progress on "closing the loop" on plastics requires careful use of terminology and definitions to avoid introducing confusion in product claims or labels. Toward this end, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has developed Environmental Guides for making marketing claims, referred to as the "Green Guides", for companies to use when communicating their efforts.
According to the FTC, recycled content refers to materials that have been recovered or diverted from the solid waste stream, either during the manufacturing processes within the supply chain (pre-consumer) or after consumer use (post-consumer). It is important to note that by-products of a manufacturing process that are normally reused with the process are considered industrial scrap and do not count toward recycled content. Recycled content is the fraction of material in a product that is derived from pre-consumer or post-consumer recycled material.
Recyclability, on the other hand, refers to products that can be collected, separated or recovered from the solid waste stream and used again, through an established recycling program. For a product to be labeled "recyclable" by consumers in their community, a product must be collected for recycling in a "substantial majority" of communities where the product is sold. This is often referred to as post-consumer "open loop" recycling. In the case of closed-loop recycling programs set up by private companies, however, the FTC allows products to be labeled as recyclable as long as the companies qualify the means for recycling. This later distinction is important for those products where companies are working to set up collection systems that operate outside of municipal waste collection for either pre-consumer or post-consumer products.
Looking to the Future
As we look to the future and to supporting the needs of future generations, enhancing sustainability by "closing the loop" on products, such as plastic packaging, will be essential. Life cycle thinking provides insight into how to manage the entire life cycle of products, not just one stage. Companies that have embraced sustainability are making outstanding progress on closing the loop by designing new packaging products with recoverability in mind while, at the same time, continuing to develop private networks to cost effectively recover and recycle plastic materials. These efforts, in turn, will further increase market demand for recycled materials and continue to enhance overall supply chain sustainability to meet the needs of today as well of those for generations to come.
SPOTLIGHT: Energy Use & Recovery
At Sealed Air, our number one goal regarding waste has always been, first and foremost, to produce less of it. This has been closely followed by identifying ways to recycle and reuse it. But today, we are increasing our focus on a third solution for reducing landfill waste – energy recovery projects through incineration.
Burning garbage as a method of waste disposal has been common for decades. But today, most incineration is part of waste-to-energy facilities which use a combustion process to generate useful byproducts, including heat and electricity. Sealed Air plastic packaging materials contain high BTU fuel content, making these materials efficient sources for use in municipal energy recovery facilities.
While this technology is not new, it has not been widely adopted due to concerns about pollution. However, today's commercially proven power technology can significantly reduce the amount of emissions that were once generated at older facilities. In addition, scientists now have a better understanding of greenhouse gas emissions, which are emitted from landfills, and other factors that contribute to climate change. This has led to recent research demonstrating that burning waste is better than sending it landfills – in particular plastic packaging materials that burn cleanly.
Landfills too can be used to generate fuel in the form of methane gas, but the EPA and other environmental groups have stated that most landfills fail to capture all the methane that is released into the atmosphere.
Consider these facts:
- According to the EPA, incinerating a ton of trash emits at least 35% less greenhouse gas and yields 10 times more electricity than landfilling it.
- In the United States alone, it is estimated that energy recovery systems installed in industrial facilities could produce up to 20% of U.S. electricity needs without burning any additional fossil fuel.
- It is estimated that global energy consumption will increase by XX percent by 2020
Given the world's need to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfills, our growing appetite for electricity and the knowledge of the consequences of relying on unstable sources of energy, increasing efforts to recover waste for use to create energy seems like a logical solution – but the fact remains that the percentage of garbage burned is far less than that is landfilled.
Sealed Air is working to be part of the solution and is an active participant in several external forums that are evaluating the potential for expanding energy recovery, including work with:
- Sealed Air is working to be part of the solution and is an active participant in several external forums that are evaluating the potential for expanding energy recovery, including work with:
- Flexible Packaging Association on a study to understand how energy recovery can be further developed for reducing landfilling of mixed plastics;
- Future for Sustainable Packaging consortium of 18 companies on developing roadmaps to enhance future sustainability, including end-of-life options for recycling, composting and energy recovery;
- Asia Packaging Federation on developing Asia Environmental-Conscious Packaging Guidelines that include energy Recovery as one of five priorities.
Reducing waste and recycling remain the top priorities at Sealed Air, long with exploring the use of renewable and compostable materials. But we also believe in pursuing broad mix of waste reduction initiatives to support our environmental efforts. This vision included:
- Expand curbside collection schemes to accept a broader range of packaging, especially plastic packaging
- Ensure municipal recycling facilities, called MRF's, can sort a broader mix of packaging
- Seperate compostables and recyclables
- Recover value from the residual plastics either as energy or feedstocks
- Use landfill for the rest
Advancing the systems for managing packaging waste is not necessarily going to be easy, but through collaboration and supply chain partnerships, we can make a difference.
Incineration and energy recovery are logical components to an effort that will take many solutions for meeting the world's growing energy needs and reducing harm to the environment.
Cheese
Amid This Waste…The Global Impact of Food Waste
Food waste devastates individuals, economies and the environment
We live in a very wasteful world and food is no exception. Unfortunately, there is a huge disconnect between what most people believe they waste and what they actually waste and the impact that waste has on the planet.
One of the most common misconceptions about food waste is that because food biodegrades it has no negative impact on the environment. But in fact, according to the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment, food waste has ten times the environ¬mental impact of packaging waste. Beginning with its impact on climate change, millions of tons of food are discarded every day in landfills where it slowly biodegrades. As it does, methane gas—a gas that is 20 times more damaging to the environment than CO2—escapes into the atmosphere. In the U.S. alone, landfills produce 34% of all methane emissions.
Food waste also represents a wasteful use of our planet's natural resources: the fertilizers, processing and energy needed to produce, transport and store food. According to a study produced by the United Kingdom's Advisory Committee on Packaging, "Of the total energy used in the food chain, 50% is used in food production, 10% on transport to the shops and retailing, 10% to make the packaging and the remaining 30% is used by shoppers to drive to the shops and store and cook food."
Besides the outright waste of energy, we use millions of gallons of water growing produce, raising livestock and washing food. Some 1.2 billion people are estimated to live in regions where demand for water is greater than supply and, according to the United Nations and the International Water Management Institute, the amount of water needed to grow the food that eventually goes to waste would meet the household needs of 500 million people and help prevent future water shortages.
"To live sustainably, we first have to understand the many different impacts of our consumption—from energy use and CO2, to air and water pollution—and how these impacts affect the planet as whole," said Jean Marie Demeautis, President of Sealed Air's Cryovac Food Solutions business. "We can go a long way to reducing our environmental impact on the planet by furthering the understanding of the impact of food waste and the ways we can reduce the amount of food we waste daily."
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food leftovers are the single-largest component of the waste stream by weight in the United States. Food waste includes uneaten food and food preparation scraps from residences or households, commercial establishments like restaurants, institutional sources like school cafe¬terias, and industrial sources like factory lunchrooms.
Over 12% of the total municipal solid waste generated in American households was food scraps, and less than three percent was recovered. The rest was thrown away and disposed in landfills or combusted in incinerators.
"The good news is in developed countries, we have modern food production systems that have given most of us the freedom to conveniently nourish ourselves.
We need to work together to overcome some of the financial and educational hurdles for eliminating waste," added Demeautis.
