as the holiday shopping season kicks off, online purchases &ndash and shipping &ndash are expected to continue to grow. photograph justin sullivangetty images as the holiday season approaches, more and more purchases are happening online. online purchases are projected to grow 20.1 to hit 1.5tn this year, according to emarketer. as a result, mail packing is a burgeoning sustainability concern.aside from the plastic and cardboard wrapping the products come in, there are the boxes, the labeling and the paper wrapping or foam packing meant to protect what is nestled inside. it&rsquos not unusual to end up with far more packaging than stuff, and the sheer amount of waste that results is staggering.according to the environmental protection agency pdf, containers and packaging accounted for 30 &ndash or 75.2m tons &ndash of total solid waste generated in the us in 2012. to put that into perspective, we discard our own weight in packaging every 3040 days, on average, according to stanford university.this figure will likely only increase as ecommerce does the same, and the magnitude in dollars reflects the demand protective packaging represents a 22bn industry, with plastic foam alone &ndash mostly expanded polystyrene, aka styrofoam &ndash valued at 6bn.a growing number of companies and entrepreneurs are working on new ways to tackle this problem. and they are making progress more than half of this packaging waste &ndash 51.5 or 38.75m tons &ndash was recovered for recycling or composting in 2012. that&rsquos a higher percentage than the 34.5 of total municipal solid waste that ended up recycled or composted, which in itself represented a big increase from the 15.9 recovered in 1990 &ndash and the 6.35 in 1960.but that still leaves plenty of packaging waste &ndash more than 36m tons &ndash in landfills. one company working to reduce that amount is waste management, north america&rsquos largest waste and recycling company, which specializes in sustainability services.show me the recyclingwaste management began working with lbp manufacturing, which supplies singleuse foodservice packaging, in 2011 to design a new product a more sustainable singleserve coffee filter.singlecup coffee filters, such as keurig&rsquos kcups, come with some tricky waste challenges they are small, which makes them harder to recycle they include coffee grounds, which aren&rsquot recyclable and they&rsquore often made of multiple materials, such as plastic or cardboard combined with a foil lid that can be punctured by a coffee machine. most customers are unlikely to separate each of the pods into their parts, recycling the plastic and foil separately and composting the coffee. from its years of recycling experience, waste management certainly had ideas about what designs and materials tend to be more recyclable. but instead of basing its advice on which materials are theoretically recyclable, the company used its own recycling infrastructure to run reallife testing &ndash from consumers to the recycling center &ndash to find out which designs were most likely to end up in the right sortation pile at the end.advertisementin some cases, that meant embedding an rfid tag in a product to see what happened to it and whether the materials ended up in the right place. if they did, waste management took the materials to potential buyers to get a more definitive sense of which materials they would buy, and which materials would retain enough value to be worth washing and using again and again.&ldquothere are many things that are theoretically recyclable, but not practically recyclable in the existing infrastructure,&rdquo explained tom carpenter, waste management&rsquos managing director. &ldquowe&rsquod check with them is this going to be a contaminant, if it has coffee grounds would doing this devalue the material or does it still have value &ndash would you pay the same rate or a premium&rdquonone of this is a guarantee the products will get recycled, of course &ndash that ultimately depends on the consumer. but all the testing was able to give waste management the confidence that if consumers do their part, the materials would end up being recovered.lessons learnedthe company ended up being surprised by some of its findings. in many cases, materials it didn&rsquot expect would work did make it through the process. for example, part of the recycling process is a screen that shakes, effectively sifting small pieces from larger ones. the company thought some smaller designs would fall through the screen and end up as waste, but in testing, they mostly didn&rsquot.on the other hand, some shapes and sizes did turn out to make a big difference to recyclability. that means that testing one product doesn&rsquot mean all similar products would yield the same result.to go back to the example of singleserve coffee filters, for instance, they come in many different shapes and sizes &ndash and some are made of foil, others are foil and plastic, some are all plastic and others have fiber components, carpenter said.&ldquoeach one is completely different,&rdquo he said. &ldquoit&rsquos a good example of where innovation in the packaging industry makes it hard on the recycling industry.still, some packaging advice applies to everyone.mixed or hybrid products ­&ndash those with two or more types of materials blended into one, such as metal interwoven with fiber &ndash often cannot be recycled. other materials, like plastic foam, have practically no value in the recycling stream and are designed only with singleuse in mind.for shipping, carpenter recommends simple fiberbased containers free from &ldquoall the extra bells and whistles of labels and excess packaging&rdquo, and wrapping products in recycled paper or newspaper rather than polystyrene peanuts.spreading the knowledgeperhaps the biggest surprise to come out of the project, though, is what it led to next.after hearing about the testing waste management did for lbp manufacturing, many other companies came calling. waste management has since worked with walmart &ndash and cradle to cradle coauthor william mcdonough &ndash to design a new cereal box, and today has close to 20 active projects at various stages, some of which involve multiple products, carpenter said.&ldquowe thought it would be a small little niche thing we do here and there,&rdquo carpenter said. &ldquoit&rsquos surprising the response we&rsquove had and what we&rsquove learned.&rdquofacebook twitter pinterest a growing number of items are finding their way to the recycling bin &ndash and to recycling facilities such as this one in san francisco &ndash but plenty of items that can&rsquot be recycled are too. photograph justin sullivangetty images companies&rsquo interest is being driven by consumers, he said, who increasingly are trying to recycle everything. this has expanded the total amount of recycling, but also has brought an added challenge more contamination of the recycling stream, which can result in more otherwise recyclable materials ending up as waste.&ldquomany people try to do the right thing,&rdquo he said. &ldquobut there&rsquos big confusion.&rdquowhat are some of the weirdest things he&rsquos seen in the bins bowling balls, he says, and big plastic cars kids can ride in &ndash complete with metal parts, batteries and electronics.meanwhile, some companies that have also made false assumptions &ndash such as that any recyclable material could be recycled, even if it&rsquos attached to other materials &ndash in the past have been called out on it, leading others to see the risk of improper labeling, carpenter said &ldquothe brands that are making those products and packages want to have some sort of assurance that if they&rsquore labeling it as recyclable, it&rsquos actually going to be recycled.&rdquolistening to social mediatake dell, which decided to reduce wasteful packaging after hearing complaints from customers about excessive and nonrecyclable shipping boxes and packaging materials back in 2008.&ldquowe got feedback about our packaging on social media &ndash which tends to be quite direct in its opinion &ndash that was actually kind of an epiphany for us,&rdquo said oliver campbell, the global packaging innovation lead at dell. &ldquopeople wanted us to care about these issues as much as they did.&rdquoadditionally, around twothirds of dell&rsquos large corporate accounts have sustainability requirements. &ldquoso there&rsquos good business reasons for doing this,&rdquo campbell added.working with waste management, the company reduced its box sizes by about 10, developed bamboo cushioning &ndash a fastgrowing material that can be composted or recycled as paper &ndash to replace foam, and also began making packaging with wheat straw, which is produced from agricultural waste and mushrooms, in collaboration with ecovative, a new yorkbased company aiming to replace plastic foam with materials made from mycelium, or mushroom roots.the bamboo and wheat straw materials eliminated 20m pounds of packaging and saved around 18m in reduced energy, water, transportation and production costs. at the same time, greenhouse gas emissions fell by an estimated 8.by 2020, dell plans to scale these efforts up to 100 sustainable packaging compared to about 60 today, campbell said.more innovationstartups are also coming up with new packaging innovations.the aforementioned ecovative, founded in 2007, uses agricultural waste to grow packaging in different shapes. it&rsquos fully compostable, meaning that it &ldquobehaves like a nutrient instead of a pollutant&rdquo, but only breaks down in wet environments with microbes, said eben bayer, ecovative&rsquos ceo and cofounder.facebook twitter pinterest new yorkbased startup ecovative makes packaging out of mycelium, or mushroom roots. photograph ecovative manufacturing it requires onefifth to oneeighth the amount of energy used to make the equivalent unit volume of foam plastic, and it&rsquos also &ldquoextremely price competitive&rdquo with middle volume fabricated polyethylene foams, bayer claims.but you can&rsquot just buy mycelium foam at home depot, and growing a new market &ndash and scaling up production to match &ndash doesn&rsquot happen overnight. &ldquoit takes time to build new supply chains,&rdquo bayer said, adding that global plastic supply chains have taken 80 years to build.in addition, packaging still isn&rsquot a top priority for most companies, and many aren&rsquot set up to look into new packaging products, so some potential customers might not make the switch even if the ecovative packaging is the same price, he said.meanwhile, repack, a finlandbased startup launched in 2011, creates reusable packaging options out of recycled materials. online shoppers pay a small deposit for the repack shipping option, and get reimbursed after the bag or box finds its way back to the company via any post office in europe.so far, the scheme seems to be working, with up to a 95 return rate. a few finnish clothing companies are using the bags, and talks are underway with companies in germany.&ldquowe&rsquore in traditional startup mode we&rsquove found that this is working and that people like it, so we&rsquore now looking to scale it and make it available all over,&rdquo said jonne hellgren, the company&rsquos managing director. &ldquothat will hopefully soon include all of the eu and the uk.&rdquobut it remains to be seen whether the model could work on a large scale for most products &ndash and whether the environmental benefits of recycling, composting or reusing would outweigh the impacts from shipping used products back to manufacturers.what&rsquos nextas online shopping grows, it&rsquos clear more change &ndash and innovation &ndash is coming.&ldquothere&rsquos a big push around what an online package needs to look like,&rdquo carpenter said. after all, much of today&rsquos packaging is designed around shelf appeal, or the ability to compete visually with similar products.&ldquodoes it need to look as glamorous when it comes to your home instead of being sold in a store&rdquo carpenter asked. &ldquoit needs to protect the product, but does it need to be as fancy&rdquofor the time being, north america and western europe remain the only regions in the world where the majority of residents make online purchases. but much of the growth in ecommerce comes from new users based in emerging markets, with asiapacific accounting for nearly half of the online buyers this year.therefore, the most effective sustainable packaging solutions would be those with a global scope. ecovative is in initial discussions about setting up partnerships in japan, south korea and china, the latter of which is projected to overtake the us in spending by 2016.&ldquowe see scale as a key requirement to drive impact, both environmentally and for our business,&rdquo bayer said.china, additionally, has reasons to be interested in sustainable shipping options, cambell added. the burning of farm waste significantly contributes to air pollution in the country. wheat straw packaging, however, offers an emissionsreducing and profitincreasing alternative.while consumers on the receiving end of those packages ultimately determine whether boxes and padding wind up in the recycling stream or compost heap rather than the landfill, campbell said, more and more companies are working to give them the opportunity to make that responsible choice.rachel nuwer is a freelance science journalist who contributes to outlets such as the new york times, bbc future and smithsonian.jennifer kho is the us editor for guardian sustainable business.the circular economy hub is funded by philips. all content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. find out more here.source httpwww.theguardian.comsustainablebusiness2014nov18onlineshoppingholidayspa…
