THE CARBON CRISIS: FOUR BIG QUESTIONS FOR THE PACKAGING INDUSTRY What practical steps is the industry taking – and what solutions are on the horizon – to tackle the monumental challenge of carbon reduction? Victoria Hattersley spoke to experts from the Carbon Trust, Amcor, Mondi, Smurfit Kappa and Tetra Pak to get their views on some of the big questions around this issue.
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educing carbon emissions to avert climate catastrophe is the true existential challenge of our times – far more than Covid or anything else we might conceivably think of. And while the pandemic may have given us some temporary breathing space over the past year as emissions, according to the Global Carbon Budget Report, took a 7% drop, it’s almost certain we will be back on the same destructive path as soon as life returns to what we might blithely consider ‘normal’. We know all this, and at Packaging Europe we report daily on the steps various members of the value chain are taking to grapple with this task. Some are making real progress, while others readily use terms like ‘circular economy’ and ‘decarbonization’ but have yet to make the kind of substantive changes the situation requires. None of the people I have spoken to for this piece claim to have all the answers but were happy to share their thoughts on what concrete action might look like. The first question they addressed – and it’s one we will all by now be familiar with – was:
1. Do we need to put the focus on carbon over plastic waste? The ‘plastics backlash’ is perhaps an overused term but it’s certainly had major reverberations across the industry in recent years. So much so that some would say the focus on the – undeniably dire – issue of plastic waste has drawn attention away from the wider overall climate crisis. Is this a fair representation? In part, it may come down to a simple case of ‘what the eye can see’. “Obviously the plastic waste is more visible so I think that, even in the perception of government and media sometimes it is put in the same bucket as climate change when really they are very different,” says Gerald Rebitzer, Director of Sustainability at Amcor Flexibles. “Both are very important so I’m not saying we should think of it as one vs. the other, but my personal view is that the climate crisis is the important issue for humanity.” But for others, they are really two parts of the same thing and cannot be treated separately. “Tackling plastic waste and addressing the climate crisis are both important and often go hand-in-hand,” says Laura Timlin, Director, Business Services at the Carbon Trust. “We know that we need to move away from using fossil fuels in order to help global economies to fully decarbonize – should virgin plastic derived from fossil fuels continue to be used at the current rate, it will comprise 17% of global emissions by 2050. So, reducing reliance on virgin plastic will be crucial to tackling the climate crisis at the same time as addressing the damaging environmental impact of plastic waste.” Most likely, the solution lies somewhere in-between. We cannot put all our energies into reducing plastic waste when the plastics industry is not even the biggest producer of carbon emissions: but more efficient use of the plastics we do create – and perhaps a greater focus on non-fossil-based materials – could make a real difference. Which leads us on to our next question.
2. What decarbonization routes should the industry focus on? The above is all well and good: but if this justified urgency is not backed up by concrete action on a wider scale then we’ll all be left floundering. The people I spoke to have some areas of agreement and some differing views on where the industry should be directing its efforts. What does seem to be a source of agreement is that all stakeholders in the packaging sector need to broaden their perspective.
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