KEREN SOOKNE’S PERSPECTIVE

Brand Owners and Consumers Eye Sustainable Packaging

Recycle-ready offerings continue to grow in the healthcare packaging community, but more work is needed on the recycling infrastructure front.

From a personal standpoint, I’m excited to see demand soar for practical, recycle-ready blisters and other life science packaging. Most of us are aware that we can’t keep consuming resources—and disposing of them—at our current rates. Brand owners are coming around to the idea that you don’t have to sacrifice barrier properties when implementing primary and secondary packaging with alternative materials or end-of-life stories.

While I interviewed a source about a recycle-ready blister package (pp. 14), she put things in perspective: it’s critical that the blister actually gets recycled after folks put in all this design work. So it’s encouraging to see packaging suppliers collaborating with organizations as well as recyclers, sorters, and hospitals to tackle the massive of issue of ensuring packages end up in the proper waste streams. (We’ll need much more investment from municipalities.)

For another waste reduction angle—of which there are many— our story on pp. 20 profiles a subscription supplement’s e-commerce starter kit and pared down refill mailers. They really left no stone unturned, down to the algae-based ink and recyclable tape.

Of course, sustainability goes far beyond recyclability—from materials to energy to water usage and more. What is your company doing to cut waste from your operations? If you have ideas you’d like to share, or hurdles you’ve run into, write me at the email below.

KEREN SOOKNE is the Director of Editorial Content of Healthcare Packaging. She may be reached at ksookne@pmmimediagroup or at linkedin.com/in/kerensookne

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