ARE POLYBAGS STILL IN FASHION? Should we continue to use polybags in the fashion industry considering the rise of sustainable alternatives? Ashley Holding, innovation manager at Fashion For Good and Adam Gendell, associate director of GreenBlue’s flagship project, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, discuss findings from their joint whitepaper with Libby Munford. Adam Gendell
Ashley Holding
LM: Ashley, I’d like to ask you how you define polybags and what their
LM: Why do you think there’s an eagerness at the moment from compa-
function is in the fashion industry?
nies in the fashion and apparel sectors to focus on polybags? What are the issues surrounding them and their use?
AH: I think the word “polybag” could mean different things to different people. In the fashion industry it’s quite a widely understood term, used generally to refer to clear, PE film bags which garment manufacturers use to package their products. It’s something that really unites almost every kind of brand, from luxury brands to value retailers, sportswear and formal wear. Almost everyone uses some form of polybag, and they’re really integral to the whole supply chain. I think that’s one really important thing to think about, and it’s really tied into logistics and supply chain elements as well. They go through distribution centres all the way to bricks and mortar retail stores, as well as consumers’ homes via e-commerce. Polybags are not always collected or recycled. AG: I think, in today’s landscape, we hear a lot about eliminating problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging, namely through the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s “New Plastic Economy” framework. What we’ve found is that polybags aren’t superfluous – they shouldn’t be considered unnecessary because the functions they provide in a complex supply chain are critical. A few months ago, we sent out a survey to the audiences of Fashion for Good, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, and the European outdoor group, and we heard from a number of companies in the fashion apparel space about polybags and what they need polybags to do. We found that, first and foremost, polybags are there to protect. Protecting the garment is much more than making sure that it doesn’t get a little bit of dust on it – we’re talking about making sure they don’t get torn, scuffed or dirty. Moisture protection is right up there as well. I’ve been fascinated by a case study published by Patagonia, where they conducted a kind of science experiment by taking a few dozen garments and sending them through its distribution system without polybags. They found that something like a third of them came out the other side too damaged to sell. Of course, if we think about the relative impact of a couple of grams of polyethylene versus a full garment, I think everyone can understand the relative importance of making sure a garment is in a saleable condition. | 60 | Packaging Europe
AG: I find this groundswell of interest really fascinating. We know that there’s a lot of attention on single-use packaging – that’s not new news. But I think we can trace all of this scrutiny back to one monolithic issue: marine plastic pollution, and the terrible images that we all see constantly. However, I’ve never seen a polybag in any of those pictures, so it strikes me that the polybag isn’t the straw, or the foam take-out container, or the plastic shopping bag – the symbols of single-use plastic packaging and marine plastic pollution. But, at the same time, it hasn’t just been a couple of companies here and there that have said that they are addressing polybags – there’s a real critical mass of companies out there that all share the same high level of interest in doing something around polybags. I think what we’ve learned is that the industry is being proactive here. They know just as well as we do that polybags in the fashion industry aren’t the plastic straw or the foam take-out container. But they are the main symbol of plastic single-use packaging within the fashion industry. If I think about fashion and apparel packaging in general, it’s actually refreshingly straightforward from my perspective – when compared with the different types of packaging that an FMCG company would use. We’ve got corrugated boxes, polybags, and then you might have some sort of hang tag. So, in a sense, I think the industry is being proactive about addressing this before it becomes the new biggest issue around plastic packaging. Another thing we’ve learned is that a lot of brand owners and retailers have zero-waste goals. And, right now, polybags aren’t in a very circular system. Most of them are made from 100% virgin material and there are a number of challenges related to capturing them and getting them into the recycling stream after they’ve been used. So, from a zero-waste perspective, today everybody has polybags, and nobody has closed the loop on polybag waste. AH: I think one thing that is difficult to understand is the exact scale of the packaging footprint. There’s really not a good amount of data on how many polybags are produced each year but, based on some estimates we’ve seen,
