Austin, Texas — Faced with a worldwide effort to regulate plastics, people in the industry need to come together if they want their voices to be heard.
That's the message from Steve Koenig, director of business development for rigid packaging with injection molding systems maker Husky Technologies of Bolton, Ontario, on the first day of The Packaging Conference Feb. 12 in Austin.
Koenig told the audience the drumbeat of opposition has been around for years, including messages that plastics are bad and recycling does not work. But with United Nation's efforts to create a treaty to end plastics pollution, the stakes are high and growing.
"Whether we are competitors, whether we are friends, customers or part of the brand, at the end of the day what's going to happen is going to impact all of us in the room. It's going to take all of us in this room to make change," Koenig said.
And it's going to take more than just sitting around at a conference talking, he said.
Being a packaging conference that's chiefly, but not exclusively, exploring issues with plastics, Koenig spoke to a crowd that was open to his message.
He told attendees that opposition language is making its way into policy, including the work through the United Nations to create the plastics treaty.
"That's where a lot of NGOs [non-governmental organizations] are starting to focus. Let's face it, they have a lot of focus with the general people, with policymakers. Unlike us, we sit here in this room. It's more like an echo chamber," Koenig said. "We're talking to ourselves. We need to get out there and actually educate the end consumer. And we need to create our own destiny and not be defined by policymakers that don't really understand our business."
People from around the world first met in Uruguay in 2022. Additional meetings followed in France and Kenya, and negotiators are set to next meet in Canada in April in an effort to negotiate a treaty covering plastics. But few of the attendees are actually from companies in the plastics industry, he said.
"We need to get out there and educate the end consumers and create our own destiny," Koenig said. "Things are being discussed without a lot of us in the room. ... It's going to take all of us in this room to make change."
He said only 3 percent of the participants taking part in global discussions for the treaty are actually in the plastics business.
"We are at a critical point," Koenig added.
"We need to get involved because they are going to make decisions — maybe some right, maybe some wrong," he said. If the plastics industry does not get more involved in the process, then it will not be able to complain about what results from the talks.
Husky's call to arms, Koenig said, comes directly from the company's longtime CEO, John Galt, who spurred the company to be more vocal after Canada deemed plastics to be toxic in 2021. That designation was later reversed by a Canadian federal court in 2023, ruling the move was an overreach under the country's environmental laws.
Husky, for years, has been a mainstay at industry conferences and historically has been happy showing off and talking about the company's new equipment and technology. But the company sees the need these days to go beyond marketing to sound an alarm that the plastics industry needs to squeeze itself into seats at the plastics treaty table, Koenig said.
Companies, he cautioned, must work through an accredited association to be involved in the treaty talks, he said.
"The real ask, what we're asking all of you, is to get involved," he said.