The packaging market is on the cusp of a new era. We are going to see new designs and materials in the near future. Sustainability is driving the changes.
Plastics are poised to benefit, but it's not going to be easy.
At our Plastics Caps & Closures 2022 conference last month, I got to hear firsthand from officials from Altium Packaging, Berry Global, Bericap, Closure Systems International, Silgan Dispensing and Retal PA. Sustainability was a major part of all the presentations.
We've been doing the Caps conference for a long time — since 2003 in Europe and 2010 in North America. Sustainability has been on the agenda for a while. But until recently, when closure makers talked about sustainability, the conversation was primarily about lightweighting.
Lightweighting highlighted advances in design, tooling, materials and processing that have helped cap makers shave grams of material from their products. That saved money for brand owners, so it was a no-brainer to invest in lightweighting.
Lightweighting is still important. It saves material, weight and cost. It also helps to minimize the carbon footprint of packaging. But when we talk about cap sustainability now, the emphasis isn't on lightweighting anymore.
In fact, one of the trends that we can see coming in the near future will make caps heavier. Tethered caps are already hitting the market in Europe, and everyone thinks they'll be spreading to other global markets soon. Tethered caps will reduce litter, and keeping them on bottles should increase the volume of caps that get recycled.
Another big trend to watch is creating designs that make caps and closures easier to recycle. Monomaterial plastic systems show a lot of promise. So do designs that get rid of springs and metal balls in pumps and sprayers.
There's one remaining problem, though: Consumers and recyclers may not be able to tell which closures are recyclable and which are not, since they look alike. So making real progress will require brand owners to widely adopt the new designs. And that's one of the rubs of sustainability discussions these days. We're talking about changes that add cost, not subtract it.
Along the same lines, closure makers have the ability to use more sustainable materials in their products, including post-consumer resins. But the cost is higher, so brands are moving slowly.
Brands want to keep using plastic because plastic packaging has a lot of advantages, including cost, convenience and safety. They also want to minimize packaging cost.
So right now, we're in a weird transition period for plastic packaging. Because brands have made commitments to make their packaging more sustainable, and they know how to do it, but they're waiting for legislation to require them to take the biggest steps that will make plastic packaging part of a truly circular economy.
I'm confident that plastic can tackle the challenges that we see on the horizon. But a couple of comments at the Caps conference have me a little worried. They were related to plastics' ability to compete with other materials.
Traditionally, rigid plastic packaging has been a growing market, thanks to the ability of plastic to take market share from materials like glass, metal and paper. So I asked a few of the packaging experts at the conference what sorts of new applications for plastics we can expect to see on store shelves. The speakers said plastics are facing an uphill battle these days and aren't really displacing traditional materials anymore.
We know plastics have many advantages, and being a circular material could be one more. We aren't quite there, but it's coming soon.
Don Loepp is editor of Plastics News and author of the Plastics Blog. Follow him on Twitter @donloepp.
