Through the years, PET bottles have been a sustainability success story, Busard maintained, but the industry has not adequately promoted advancements made over time. He specifically points to lightweighting — the use of less PET to make each bottle — as one example of how containers today compare favorably to those made in the past. Another topic that's not been promoted enough, he said, is the use of post-consumer recycled resin in making new products.
"We just mistakenly thought our deeds were telling the story enough," said Busard during an interview at the recent Packaging Conference in Doral, near Miami.
PET supporters can point to its relatively higher recycling rate compared with other resins, but with only about 3 in 10 bottles being recaptured on average, the material lags behind other packaging substrates such as aluminum and paper.
Low recycling rates put an easy target on the back of the plastics industry for not only opponents of the material but also competitors.
Busard said plastics companies have been too focused on simply running their businesses in the past without considering promotion.
That has to change, he said.
Creation of the coalition comes at a time when public perception of plastics probably has never been worse, with bans on certain products — think bags, straws and other single-use foodservice products as well as bottles — dotting the country. Often enacted on the municipal level, but certainly also on the state level, these bans have challenged the plastics industry in ways like never before.
In the face of opposition, the industry has struggled at times to present an effective counter to opponents.
The two goals of the new group are straightforward, but not easy:
• Promoting stakeholder understanding to help the industry navigate a changing regulatory environment.
• Advocating for well-crafted legislation and other solutions to help address plastic waste and demonstrate that recycling works.
"I think the average consumer doesn't really recognize just the purpose of plastic packaging in its role in preserving, protecting, reducing food waste, enabling access to affordable, clean water and medical devices and even medicine," Ferlin said.
"The average consumer doesn't think about that and so we take it for granted. ... That's where the plastics industry should step up and point out the benefits that plastic brings to everyday life, because the average person doesn't think about it at all," she said. "At the same time, we have to address the plastic waste issue. And so that's through our innovation and through our advocacy," Ferlin said.
"You know, the PET package, in a lot of cases, has been demonized. And we need to make sure that consumers feel like they have the right to buy. They're not guilty of anything," she said.
The coalition's members are starting to coordinate planning and efforts to amplify a pro-PET message. "We get together and ensure that we're moving towards these goals, promoting stakeholder understanding and addressing the plastic waste and showing that the recycling of PET does work and that we want to encourage more of that," Ferlin said.
Busard called the coalition an interesting, nimble group with all members invested in PET. "Should be able to move fast. Should be able to make decisions pretty darn quickly," he said.
"That's not to say that six companies who just got together in a group are going to initially and immediately agree on the priorities. So what everybody has agreed is we need to do more, and we've got to do it quickly. The question we're finalizing is, what are those priorities that we want to start with? You can't do everything at once," he said.
The new coalition is working through NAPCOR to lean on that group's existing administration.
"We're not trying to do anything that doesn't align with the interest and benefit of all NAPCOR members. But we wanted to put almost like the smaller group of companies together so that we could move more swiftly and be nimble and make decisions quickly when it comes to initiatives that would be spearheaded by these six companies," Ferlin said.
All six are committing money to fund the new coalition, but Busard declined to reveal the group's initial budget in these early days of the group.
"It'll take time, it will take grassroots efforts, and it'll take collaboration and commitments from executive leadership at big players in the industry. And that's exactly what we're doing with the PET Plastics Coalition. I think it's possible," Ferlin said.
