This increase in paper-based packaging has been wreaking havoc on the world’s forests, wildlife and climate. In an effort to reduce the impact to ancient and endangered forests—especially those that are high-carbon and high-biodiversity-value forests—one not-for-profit environmental organization, Canopy, recently launched an initiative and action plan targeting the protection of 30 to 50 per cent of the world’s forests.

In 2017, 245.8 million metric tonnes of paper packaging was produced, including a high percentage made from trees logged from vital, high-carbon value forests and endangered species’ habitats. By 2025, that number is slated to grow by over 20 per cent, which conflicts with the International Panel on Climate Change and International Union for Conservation of Nature 2030 imperatives for resolving the climate and biodiversity crises.

“[E-commerce] already has a massive footprint, and that footprint is continuing to grow quite aggressively,” says Nicole Rycroft, founder and executive director of Canopy. And, she adds, those figures don’t include the over-450-million tonnes of paper that is produced each year, of which more than half is also included in packaging.

Recently, discussions about reduction have focused on single-use plastics in packaging, resulting in a market shift to paper packaging products and a greater impact on forests. According to Canopy, 30 per cent of the climate solution relies on forest conservation. It is also the key to protecting species and preventing future epidemics.

Pack4Good initiative

Canopy’s Pack4Good initiative was launched in October 2019 and has now teamed up with 22 major companies—representing 71 brands and $66 billion in annual revenues, including Stella McCartney, prAna and Telus—to help prevent the world’s ancient and endangered forests from ending up as shipping boxes and single-use packaging.

“We’re cognizant that packaging has been going through a bit of a zeitgeist moment in recent years,” notes Rycroft. “As companies and governments have been grappling with the environmental impacts of plastic packaging, we wanted to ensure that there wasn’t a situation of unintended consequence created with these companies and governments, in that as they tried to resolve plastic pollution, they were exacerbating the impacts on forests.”

According to TAPPI, 57 per cent of all the paper made in the world goes into packaging. And according to Smithers, an increase in e-commerce, along with the amount of packaged consumer goods in the food and beverage industry, has led to a 2.5 per cent annual increase in paper packaging.

Rycroft notes that apparel brands are responsible for over 50 per cent of B2C e-commerce, and many brands use just as much, if not more, fibre in the packaging that underpins their businesses as they do in the actual apparel that they sell.

“Our launch of Pack4Good was really to seek to ensure that we’re enabling brands to have a holistic approach to addressing their packaging impacts,” says Rycroft. “Most of the brands that we work with already have plastic packaging commitments in place. And this is kind of a complimentary or synergistic strategy for them to ensure that they’re not trading in one environmental problem for another.”

The brands that have committed to Pack4Good have vowed to increase the use of recycled fibre, smart design and next-generation solutions throughout their packaging supply chains. Pack4Good’s partners are committed to ensuring that by the end of 2022, all their packaging is free of fibre from ancient and endangered forests; is designed to reduce material use; maximizes recycled and alternative next-generation fibres, such as agricultural residues; and uses FSC-certified paper when virgin forest fibre continues to be used.

“We started working with some of them to expand their commitments, which have been really focused on viscose and rayon fabrics, to include packaging. It was just a natural extension of conversations that we were already having and expansion of relationships that were already in existence,” says Rycroft.

In addition to working with brands, Canopy works with next-generation technology entrepreneurs to provide alternatives to conventional wood-based technologies.

“Our requirement of the technology entrepreneurs that we work with is that they are price-competitive with conventional wood or wood-based technologies and that they’re at least equivalent in terms of the technical performance,” notes Rycroft. “Those alternative fibres perform equivalently, and they can be incorporated back into the recycling stream.”

Creating an action plan

After identifying the need for an action plan about 18 months ago, Canopy went into a period of deep research, analysis and scenario-mapping. They found that forests are identified as 30 per cent of the climate solution, and 80 per cent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity depends on forest ecosystems for their existence. In January 2020, Canopy released Survival – A Pulp Thriller, its 2030 blueprint for the ramp-up of next-generation solutions to this forestry crisis.

“This is a turnaround decade,” says Rycroft. “We were really pleasantly surprised, after doing the analysis and in the mapping of scenarios within Survival, just how viable this pathway is. If we’re to protect 30 to 50 per cent of the world’s forests by 2030—which, even to us, initially sounded a little bit crazy—then how do we actually get there? Is it even possible? Survival made us feel very confident that it actually is possible, and that it’s affordable to this scale to change.”

According to the action plan, in order to eliminate ancient and endangered forests from the pulp supply chain, 324 alternative fibre and recycled paper mills must be built (or retrofitted) globally, while 7.52 million hectares of new forests must be planted for fibre. Nearly 17 million tonnes of ancient and endangered forests will need to be removed from the supply chain through reuse, efficiency and reduction initiatives by major purchasers or forest products. In addition, protected or restored forests must not be used for fibre farms.

As part of the action plan, Survival found that alternative agricultural fibres could be used in place of forest fibre in paper and packaging products to reduce the impact to forests globally. Alternative fibres include agricultural residues such as straw leftover after the food grain harvest, or microbial cellulose, which can be grown on food waste. According to Survival, prior to the 1800s, paper was made from annual plant fibres, cotton rags and flax/linen. While many parts of the world shifted to using trees, some countries, including India and China, never stopped producing paper from agricultural fibres.

Over the past decade, cleaner and more efficient technologies have been developed to convert alternative fibres, which are currently being disposed of or burned, into paper and packaging at scale. These fibres include wheat straw residues; sorghum straw residue; flax and hemp straw residue; sugar cane bagasse residue; pineapple leaves; bamboo; and fibre-specific crops, such as miscanthus and switchgrass.

While the technology required to make this a reality is not rampant, agricultural fibre pulp mills are beginning to be built around the world. For example, Columbia Pulp, located in Washington State, is the first commercial-scale wheat straw pulp mill in North America since the last one closed in the 1960s. This is just one of a dozen such ventures.

When asked about the lessons Canopy learned while putting its action plan together, Rycroft noted that we actually have more than enough fibre to make this goal a reality.

“The projections that are included in here are very conservative. We wanted to make sure that we didn’t inadvertently trade in one environmental disaster for another, that we were stripping off so much straw after the food grain harvest that farmers were then going to have to use more fertilizers on their soil,” she says.

Rycroft adds that the projections are based on rigorous assumptions around how much organic matter needs to be left on the field to maintain the organic integrity of the soil. “In spite of that, there is more than enough fibre both for the paper and packaging side as well as waste clothing on the manmade cellulosic viscose supply chain side,” she says.

Canopy aims to have agricultural fibre products certified by the Roundtable for Sustainable Biomaterials to ensure sustainable removals, the maintenance of soil carbon and other social and environmental factors for sustainable agriculture are met. According to Survival, “practices that regenerate soil carbon or avoid carbon emissions, for example diverting crop residue from traditional burning or the planting of fibre-specific crops that fix carbon on degraded soils, can be certified through to the end product”.

The action plan indicates a total investment of $68.8 billion between 2020 and 2030 will allow for consumption reduction, building mills to pulp alternative fibres, increasing recycling capacity and planting new trees to prevent the use of wood from ancient and endangered forests.

Canopy says Survival outlines a tangible plan and concrete targets for shifting the pulp sector away from its reliance on forest fibre.

“I think our reflection with pulling this together was that there’s no single silver bullet,” says Rycroft. “There are multiple pathways and technologies for us to be able to achieve this vision. Demand side players—the brand, customers and printers—all have a really important part to play in it, as do the producers on both sides, as well as enablers like the investment community in government, both in terms of permitting, and the mobilization of capital, to make this kind of infrastructure transition.”

Although Rycroft notes that there isn’t one simple answer to protecting forests, here is proof that there are ways to reduce the impact packaging has on forests by up to 50 per cent. Click here to learn more about the action plan, Survival: A Pulp Thriller.

This article was originally published in the Summer 2020 issue of Packaging for Printers.

The Blueline Ranking has become an essential resource to companies wishing to meet their Scope 3 targets and broader sustainability goals. In fact, it was awarded Gold in its inaugural year for Most Environmentally Progressive Printing Service by PrintAction.

Over the four years since its inception, the Blueline Ranking has evolved and improved each year. Here are five takeaways from this year’s ranking:

• Next-generation solutions

Circular economy is increasingly on the tip of everyone’s tongues. The top five printers in this year’s Blueline Ranking are pushing green innovation to another level by supporting the development of next-generation solutions in North America. These are inputs like agricultural residue and wheat straw papers. With wheat straw pulp carrying half the ecological footprint of conventional wood fibre, these next-generation papers will help reduce the impact sourcing packaging and paper on the world’s forests and natural systems.

• Packaging

Canopy recently launched Pack4Good, a new campaign that aims to reduce packaging’s impact on high carbon and species rich forest ecosystems. For the first year, packaging is included in this year’s Blueline. An estimated three billion trees go into the packaging supply chain each year, and that number is projected to grow as a result of the booming e-commerce business and a shift away from plastics. Pack4Good works to ensure this won’t drive deforestation or increase forest degradation as we help brands and packaging producers develop smarter packaging design, as well as alternatives that diversify the fibre basket. Printers and their clients will be looking to find ways to source for packaging more sustainably, and Pack4Good is, well, a good place to start.

• A complete toolkit

The Blueline Ranking works in tandem with other Canopy-created tools to give printers and their customers the analysis they need to make more informed sustainability choices as well as options to be able to source paper more sustainably.

• ForestMapper is an interactive map of the world’s ancient and endangered forests designed to help companies identify high-value forests and sourcing risks. It is endorsed by over 50 brands and companies. Many of the printers assessed in this year’s Blueline are now using it to assess risk in their supply chain.
• Ecopaper Database is a comprehensive list of the most eco-friendly papers available in the global market, and who produces them – making it easy to find just the right eco-paper or packaging for the job at hand.

• Climate Goals

‘Climate’ should be the word of the year, as the climate crisis made world news in 2019 as never before. Companies large and small are looking for innovative and accessible ways to lessen their impact on global climate instability. Scientists identify forests as 30 percent of the climate solution and are calling for the protection of 30 percent of the world’s most important intact forests by 2030 as we strive to keep Earth stable. Printers can provide that extra level of service and attention to their clients by helping them meet their goals with lower carbon options like recycled and next-generation papers and packaging.

• Improving your score

The good news is that there are a myriad of ways printers can improve their standing in the Blueline Ranking. This year saw a number of printers move significantly up the ranks and improving their overall scores and ink-drop positioning. Printers can develop leading paper procurement policies. They can also work with Canopy to help advance forest conservation initiatives, as well as shift their supply chain to be more sustainable, and work to enhance their public reporting.

If you hadn’t heard, the top three printers on the 2019 Blueline Ranking are The Printing House (TPH), Hemlock Printers, and Mitchell Press respectively. These companies scored coveted ‘dark green ink drops’ and distinguished themselves in 2019 by:

• Requesting suppliers provide forest of origin information to assess the risk of having ancient and endangered forests in their supply chain;
• Asking at least one mill partner to test paper made from North American sourced agricultural residue fibre; and
• Writing to government decision makers to encourage additional conservation and protected areas in a priority landscape in Canada’s Boreal Forest.

Below is the list of Canadian printing companies featured in the 2019 Blueline Ranking and their respective position:

1. The Printing House (TPH)
2. Hemlock Printers
3. Mitchell Press
4. TC Transcontinental Printing
6. Metropolitan Fine Printers
8. Marquis Book Printing
9. Friesens
11. The Lowe-Martin Group
16. RR Donnelley
17. St. Joseph Communications
19. Vistaprint (a Cimpress business)

At the same time and as we enter a new decade, Canadians are seized with the need to take real action to address the impacts of our changing climate, in a way that protects family-supporting jobs in communities that need them. Notwithstanding recent setbacks, Canada’s forest products sector is ready, willing and able to provide innovative solutions to some of our most pressing challenges.

Currently, our sector is working on a number of priorities that top the list of the Trudeau government’s agenda. These include fighting climate change, reducing our reliance on single-use plastics, strengthening opportunities for middle-class families and advancing smart conservation. In each of these areas, Canadian forestry and our forest products sector are uniquely able to make a real difference.

The climate change–fighting power of forests and forest products is known the world over. Natural Resources Canada’s State of the Forests Report (2018) confirms that sustainably harvesting trees to turn them into long-lived carbon-storing wood products, and replanting younger seedlings, provides a carbon sink of 20 million tonnes.

Trees don’t live forever. Across Canada’s boreal forest, they only live for 80 to 100 years, at which time they are susceptible to pests, fire, or simply falling over. Healthy, young, regenerating forests pull more carbon per unit area than almost any other type of land cover.

On the products side, using wood in building construction to replace more carbon-intensive and environmentally harmful products like cement can help green our cities and towns. We can also take wood waste leftover at our sawmills and turn that into traditional and new products that people want and need, from toilet paper to bio-adhesives to bio-fuels.

This wood waste can also be used to make more sustainable packaging materials, as Canada develops a plan to reduce the use of single-use plastics. The ability to maximize utilization – or use every part of the tree – is just one of forestry’s contributions to the circular economy.

During the election campaign, Prime Minister Trudeau committed to conserving 25 percent of Canada’s lands by 2025. Canada’s forest sector is ready to be a solutions provider here too. Forestry in Canada is rooted in conservation. For starters, Canada’s working forest represents less than half of all forests in the country. Within this working forest, over 40 percent of it is currently under some kind of conservation measure.

This includes set-asides for wildlife habitat, buffers around streams and wetlands, and buffers around other areas with conservation value such as rare plants and ecosystems. In the drive to conserve 25 percent, how we account for conservation matters – and there is much to be counted within our working forest as we advance the national conservation agenda.

This brings us to job creation and sustained prosperity for the middle class. Today, Canada’s forest products sector contributes more than $73 billion to our economy and we employ more than 230,000 in over 600 communities. The transformation of the forest sector and breakthrough innovations are delivering significant economic opportunities for prosperity and family-supporting jobs.

Wages and benefits in the forest sector are among the highest and most competitive in the country. It’s also worth noting that about 70 percent of Indigenous communities are situated in or near forested areas and that the forest products industry is one of the largest employers of Indigenous people in Canada.

Canada’s forests and our careful management of this precious and renewable resource are a beacon for the rest of the world. Let’s make 2020 the year that we collectively embrace our natural advantage and use the power of Canada’s forestry workers to fight climate change, advance smart conservation, better leverage the green power of Canadian wood products and ensure prosperity for hard working Canadian families.

Derek Nighbor is the president of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC), which provides a voice for Canada’s wood, pulp and paper producers nationally and internationally.

“There are facts and there is fiction,” says John Mullinder, Executive Director of the Paper & Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC). “And most of the claims made by Canopy as they relate to Canada are fiction.”

For starters, he says, most of the packaging material made by Canadian mills is already 100-percent recycled content. “It’s not made (as Canopy claims) with the “habitat of endangered species such as orangutans or caribou.” It’s made from old used boxes collected from the back of Canadian factories and supermarkets; from offices; and from Canadian homes. And has been for years. So no, it doesn’t have a “crushing footprint” on the world’s forests, biodiversity and climate.”

“The small amount of virgin paper that is used to make paper packaging in Canada doesn’t come from ‘’ancient” forests either, in the normal sense of that word. To most people, “ancient” means old, as in very old. In fact, Canada’s forests are relatively young, mostly between 41 and 120. And since Canopy mentions the Canadian boreal, guess what percentage of its trees is over 200 years old? Yep, a mere 1 percent. Check out the data from the National Forest Inventory. To call the Canadian boreal ‘ancient’ is both misleading and exaggerated.”

Mullinder says Canopy fails to mention the other side of the ledger: that new trees are planted to regenerate the forest. This is provincial law in Canada he says. Logged areas must be successfully regenerated after harvest, either by natural or artificial means (planting and seeding). In Canada, this averages more than a thousand new seedlings per minute, or 615 million a year. It balances what is harvested.

And far from “leaving a trail of deforestation” (as Canopy claims), the paper packaging industry in Canada is not responsible for any of it, says Mullinder. The major cause of deforestation in Canada is not forestry, it’s conversion of forest land to agriculture, and has been for years.

Mullinder notes that Canopy doesn’t mention that corrugated shipping boxes are the most widely recycled material in Canada with an  estimated national recovery rate of 85 percent; or that an amazing 98 percent of the corrugated boxes ending up in Ontario homes are recovered through the Blue Box for further recycling, providing a continuous feedstock for a circular economy.

More forest facts

There are some other forest facts that brand owners and publishers should know about Canadian forestry, says Mullinder:

• That in any given year 99.8 percent of Canada’s forests are not logged at all.
• The 0.2 percent that is logged is mostly logged for lumber (to build houses and hospitals etc.) with lesser amounts harvested for pulp and paper products. The harvested area is subject not only to provincial sustainable forest management practices that include mandatory regeneration but also to independent third-party certification audits.
• Canada leads the world in the amount of forest independently certified as sustainably managed. It is currently home to over 37 percent of the world’s total certified forests.

Brand owners and publishers should be very careful, says Mullinder, before lending their names and credibility to causes without checking the facts first, saying “Facts do matter.”

“It can seem counterintuitive to some, but the profit motive protects our forests. By this logic, forestry companies make substantial investments to reduce waste and get the most out of each tree harvested in the forest,” says Alexandre Moreau, Public Policy Analyst at the MEI and author of the publication.

Canada’s forest cover has remained relatively stable since 1990 despite harvesting activities, and innovation has a lot to do with that, the institute says. For one thing, the volume of softwood roundwood needed to produce a given quantity of boards fell by nearly a quarter between 1990 and 2017. For another, recycled sawmill products accounted for only 20 per cent of pulp and paper mills’ supply four decades ago, whereas it’s over 80 percent today.

“A lot more is produced while cutting down fewer trees. Whether in sawmills or in pulp and paper mills, efficiency gains have allowed more to be done with less. The value added to sawmilling sub-products, with the help of new technologies, has also boosted productivity, with the wealth derived from each tree continuing to rise,” Moreau says.

The forestry sector employs nearly 60,000 workers and generates $6.5 billion in economic activity in Quebec alone, the institute estimates. “The forest accounts for 10 percent of jobs in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region, and more than 40 percent in Northern Quebec,” Moreau says. “That’s why it’s so important to seize the opportunities provided by forests, and why it is also important to debunk certain myths regarding the state of the forests and their harvesting.”

“Today’s technology and methods allow the forest to be harvested in a way that respects the environment, meeting both social expectations with regard to respecting biodiversity and the economic needs of the workers and communities that depend on the forest,” says Moreau. “Recent history teaches us that the profit motive will be a great help in this regard.”

A plethora of business publications have touted the value of being a copy cat, drawing on the experiences and innovation of other businesses to realign your own. As it happens, recent research undertaken by a fashion industry leader offers valuable insights that can help realign the sustainability of the printing sector.

Like paper, manmade cellulosic fibres (MMCF), such as viscose and rayon, and trademarked fabrics, such as Tencel, are all derived from forests, including the Canadian Boreal and the Indonesian rainforest. More than 150 million trees are logged every year and turned into cellulosic fabric.

As purchasers of MMCF, fashion leaders – including those involved in the CanopyStyle initiative – are very attuned to their sustainability performance. In the last four years, 125 of the world’s most recognized brands, including H&M, Zara/Inditex, Lululemon, and The Gap have turned their attention to ensuring their viscose fabrics, and in many cases, their packaging and printed materials, do not originate from the world’s ancient and endangered forests.

Luxury and eco
Luxury fashion label Stella McCartney is one brand that is deeply committed to sustainability and to that end, commissioned SCS Global Services to undertake a truly groundbreaking Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the impact of sourcing MMCF. The findings paint a very interesting picture for the Canadian print industry.

The LCA compared the environmental performance of 10 different raw material sources of manmade cellulosic fibres, examining a broad range of environmental issues from fibre derived from forests and agricultural operations right through to the production of viscose/rayon or their equivalents made with flax.

This LCA sets the bar for studies of this kind, factoring in critical yet previously omitted categories, such as climate hot spot impacts, ocean acidification, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystem impacts, forest disturbance and key species loss. Land use conversion and species impacts were analyzed across global fibre sources including the Canadian Boreal forest.

Lifecycle work
While focused on the production of cellulosic fibre for clothing, the LCA’s findings are worthy of close examination by all types of forest product customers as the results revealed the impacts of extraction across a wide range of forest ecosystems. Pulp derived from Canada’s Boreal Forests registered some of the heaviest environmental footprints. Canadian Boreal forest pulp was the second worst performer for global climate change, faring only marginally better than Indonesian rainforest pulp where carbon loss is calculated as very high.

As the CanopyStyle Fourth Anniversary Report states, “Canopy-Style brands and viscose producers are bringing their influential voices to advancing conservation across Canada’s carbon-rich Boreal forests. Participating brands are also engaging to make the finalization of the Broadback Forest protected area a reality. Additionally, leading viscose producer Aditya Birla has a moratorium maintaining 1.1 million hectares of intact caribou habitat in another part of Canada’s vast Boreal Forest, creating the space for the development of land use plans that include large-scale protected areas and First Nations free, prior and informed consent.”

Of all the specific forest regions analyzed in this LCA, the Canadian Boreal and Indonesian rainforest were the areas identified where the depletion of valuable wood resources is occurring, leading to the clear conclusion that these two fibre and pulp sources were the worst performing sources of MMCF assessed. In contrast Belgian Flax and recycled textile pulps presented favourably across the majority of the performance categories.

Of interest to paper users, these results echo three different life cycle studies done for copy paper or tissue, including the Kimberly Clark LCA on Alternative Natural Fibers. All of these studies previously showed recycled paper pulp and wheat straw pulp to have lower impacts than virgin fibre.

In the future
This growing body of in-depth analysis provides clear guidance to fibre purchasers and all suppliers committed to improving the sustainability performance of the paper, packaging and viscose supply chains. As Canopy Executive Director, Nicole Rycroft noted, “These findings reinforce the need to prioritize and advance commercial-scale production of pulp, paper and packaging made from closedloop solutions such as agriculture residues and recycled paper.”

Although next generation solutions are not yet a commercial reality, lower footprintpapers are available. The great news with paper is that you can help your clients hit their sustainability targets today.

Neva Murtha works with Canada’s magazine publishers and printers to develop visionary procurement policies.

This column was originally published in the May 2018 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

The biggest El Nino ever recorded is building strength, bringing projections of wild and unpredictable weather for the winter ahead.

This follows a year when Eastern Canada endured a brutal, seemingly endless winter, then forest fires ravaged the West this summer, leading to multiple millions of dollars in costs and losses. Texas emerged from four years of drought to torrential rains and flash flooding.

As the climate changes all around us and we wonder “what’s next?” World leaders, scientists, NGOs and concerned citizens gathered in Paris in late November for COP 21 – the Conference of the Parties on the global climate. Canopy is hopeful that these leaders will be as bold and unabashed as the weather around us in setting actions and taking concrete next steps.

Facing the issues
The issue of climate change is so incredible in scale and impact that most of us often feel it is completely beyond our control or influence. But we have more power than we might think. Especially when we work in industries that use trees and forest products as a foundation of business.

The choices you make on what to purchase, where it is sourced and how you assess the practices of those harvesting the forests can make a meaningful contribution to helping stabilize the climate – for now and for your children’s children.

As we all know, trees absorb carbon. As do the undisturbed soils that nurture intact forests ecosystems. The more scientists study the climate-regulating ability of forests, the more data confirms their critical role. Trees remove carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, storing it in leaves, woody tissue, roots and organic matter in soil. The older the tree, the more carbon it not only holds, but continues to absorb. Once an ancient tree is felled and the soil disturbed, a massive amount of carbon is released, adding to the global atmospheric burden at a time when we desperately need to keep new carbon out of the atmosphere.

Right here at home, more than 201 billion tonnes of carbon are stored in the trees, soils, water and peat of North America’s Boreal Forest – equivalent to 26 years of the world’s emissions from fossil fuel burning.  Furthermore, naturally occurring ecosystem services provided by the Boreal, such as carbon storage and water filtration, are worth 2.5 times more than the value of extracting resources such as minerals and timber.

Releasing the carbon
The loss of the world’s forests releases about two billion tonnes of carbon per year. Tropical deforestation accounts for about 25 percent of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and 12 percent of total greenhouse gases (GHG). This year’s forest and peat fires in Indonesia have been releasing more GHGs than the daily emissions of the U.S. economy and has Indonesia on track to be one of the largest GHG emitters of 2015.

Figures from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (2010) show there are signs that deforestation numbers are decreasing in several countries, but nonetheless continue to grow at an alarmingly high rate in others.  

Given the importance of intact forest landscapes in regulating our climate, it turns out there is much we can do at a local and national level, as businesses and citizens. Keeping high carbon forests intact is one of the most immediate and cost effective ways to keep our climate stable and species vibrant.

Of course we will continue to use forests – for fuel and food, paper and lumber. What matters is which forest products we choose. These choices will make a huge difference to both our businesses and society.

Find out where your paper comes from. Choose not to buy from threatened and endangered ancient forests that are high carbon value. Choose second growth or pre-1994 plantation, FSC-certified forests. Choose to support the development of lower carbon options like straw-based papers and recycled fibre papers. Lend your support to the community of business leaders who advocate for the protection of high conservation value forest ecosystems.

Then let your customers know you are taking steps to address these critical issues. Update the sustainability content on your Website. As Canopy has discovered over the past decade, transparency is a critical step for printing companies moving forward and will only become more important for securing your status with large clients. Canopy has now collaborated with more than 750 companies involved with the printing supply chain and, during our discussions to establish environmentally sound purchasing  policies, their committees always express a desire – and ever more regularly an RFQ requirement – to source forest fibre from non-controversial sources. Our corporate partners prefer that their printed products be produced on recycled and FSC paper and, importantly, that their printer has a finger on the pulse of sustainability issues.

Given that up to 80 percent of a printers’ carbon footprint is attributable to the papers they use, Canopy recommends that companies require their printers and paper suppliers to report transparently on key indicators like pre- and post-consumer recycled content, use of non-wood and straw content in papers, virgin wood fibre from non-controversial forest regions, among others. Public reporting of sustainability efforts is the first indicator of corporate integrity.
For the best paper choices, see Canopy’s Ecopaper Database.

Read the new cutting edge Life Cycle Analysis from New Leaf Paper for more compelling reasons to choose recycled. Choose wisely – for the global climate, for your business and for our common future.

Neva Murtha works with Canada’s magazine publishers and printers to develop visionary procurement policies. She can be reached at neva@canopyplanet.org

The Peel plant serves the Cities of Brampton and Mississauga and the Town of Caledon, comprising a total of some 330,000 households and 80,000 multi-residential units. The plant houses a waste transfer station (to transfer black-bagged garbage from collection trucks onto long-haul trailers destined for a landfill site), a massive organics composting operation (to process kitchen organics collected via curbside Green Bins and yard waste), and a single-stream Material Recovery Facility (MRF, the

recycling part of the operation), with a capacity to process 130,000 tonnes of recyclable material collected from curbside Blue Boxes annually. The term “single stream” means that households mix together in the Blue Boxes all recyclable items, including packaging made of paper, cardboard, glass, aluminum, steel, and plastics; then this mixture is carried by collection trucks to the plant for sorting.

Kevin Mehlenbacher, Specialist, Waste Collection and Processing, explains that, after the collection trucks drop the mixed recyclables off at MRF’s tipping floor, a front-end loader pushes them onto two inclined conveyor belts that transport them through a sequence of machinery and rooms for mechanical and manual sorting. In mechanical sorting, appliances like screens, magnets and air jets are used to sort the recyclables into individual streams, each consisting of one type of material. This process is aided by some 120 temporary workers, divided into two eight-hour shifts, who help sort the recyclables as they speed by on the fast-moving conveyor belts and remove any stray objects that would contaminate the sorted materials. Finally, two balers form each of the sorted materials into bales, which are shipped out to secondary markets via transport trucks.

Newly recyclable items
Mehlenbacher explains Peel has now expanded the list of items that can be recycled via its Blue Box Program to include all mixed rigid plastics, such as:

• Clear clamshell packaging used for fruits, vegetables and bakery products,
• Large clear plastic tubs, lids and trays used for salads, cakes, delicatessen foods and cooked chickens,
• Clear plastic egg cartons,
• Take-out containers and
microwaveable trays,
• Garden nursery pots, cells,
trays and flats,
• Plastic vitamin and prescription
bottles, and
• Thermoform blister packaging.

Other major Canadian cities and municipalities, including Calgary, Durham, Halifax, Halton, Hamilton, London, Niagara, Ottawa, Toronto and York, also recycle these items, which formerly had to be captured from the Peel MRF’s post-recycled waste by reprocessing at another recycling facility. Mehlenbacher says Peel’s waste composition audits indicate that processing these mixed rigid plastics at the MRF will capture an additional 1,600 to 2,100 tonnes of plastic per year – another of the continuous positive steps Peel is making towards its goal of recycling 70 percent of its waste by 2016.

The processing of the additional plastics has cost Peel around $3,107,500 in capital improvements to the MRF’s sorting equipment, plus about an additional $330,000 annually for increased operating costs. Likely Peel will recover half of the capital-improvement costs from the Continuous Improvement Fund, a partnership program of Waste Diversion Ontario, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the City of Toronto and Stewardship Ontario to improve Ontario’s municipal Blue Box Programs.

Markets for recycled materials
Mehlenbacher says the MRF typically sends out 15 to 20 trailers of recovered materials a day, bound for destinations that vary in distance from a few blocks away to as far as China. “China is a growing economy, so they are looking for raw materials,” he says. “For example, if our local newsprint recycling facility is not able to take the full amount we generate, we send the surplus to Quebec, the States, or overseas.” He reports that the sale of recycled materials earns $10 to $15 million in annual revenues which help offset the MRF’s other waste-management costs.

Karyn Hogan, Specialist, Waste Reduction and Reuse, explains that, besides improving the MRF’s recycling rate, another main reason why Peel has recently added mixed rigid plastics to its Blue Box Program is that staff finally found a secondary market for these materials.  She says access to end-markets often determines which materials a municipality can recycle, and the search is complicated by the fact that municipalities must compete with manufacturers as vendors to the same markets.  

Mehlenbacher adds that these markets lead to the conversion of recycled materials into an almost infinite variety of consumer goods: “For instance, 240 plastic jugs can be remade into one plastic Muskoka chair.  Nine 2-litre pop bottles make one extra-large polyester t-shirt.”

Better-informed consumers
In conjunction with expanding its Blue Box Program, Peel has recently collaborated with the Cities of Toronto and Hamilton and the Regional Municipalities of Durham, Halton, Niagara and York (collectively all forming an area known as The Golden Horseshoe) on a public-awareness campaign called Recycle More. Two-thirds funded by Stewardship Ontario and the Waste Diversion Ontario Continuous Improvement Fund, this $600,000 campaign delivered the message that additional mixed rigid plastic packaging items can now be recycled to nearly
seven million Ontario consumers via print media and radio, internet and billboard advertising launched between September and November 2013.  

Because for decades most major Canadian municipalities have operated recycling programs and published their own marketing collateral, including Websites with intricate instructions on how to dispose of various types of waste, the environmental issues associated with packaging have been public concerns for a long time in Canada. But Recycle More and the continued efforts of municipalities and other environmental groups are helping to make today’s consumers even more environmentally knowledgeable than they were in the past. So in an effort to keep up with ever increasing public expectations, environmental sustainability continues to be a bigger driver of innovation than ever before in packaging design.

Consumers have also learned recently that a compostable label or symbol on a product is not necessarily a true indicator of environmental friendliness: Last year in widely publicized incidents, food giants Frito Lay (a division of PepsiCo) and Kraft Canada introduced experimental compostable packages, then pulled them off the shelves of Canadian retail outlets. Frito Lay’s was a bag made mainly from polylactic acid for SunChips and Kraft’s was an “Earth Pack” bottle made of tapioca starch and bamboo for Dentyne, Trident, and
Clorets gum.  The main reason for these recalls was that, despite the compostability claim advertised on the packages, based solely on laboratory testing, the packages failed to break down in Canadian municipal composting facilities. (Consumers also complained that the chips bag was too noisy.)

The composting limitations of these packages meant they would end up contaminating not only Green Bin but also Blue Box Programs since, as Hogan explains, plant-based packaging materials are currently not recyclable because secondary markets are not interested in buying them. She suggests that a better outcome might occur if packaging producers would consult municipalities and markets to determine the parameters of their waste handling and reprocessing facilities before bringing a new package to market. This precaution would be a better alternative than being publicly embarrassed after the fact and could save a lot of wasted time and resources, says Hogan.

Like municipally untested compostability claims, another potentially misleading message for consumers comes from the recycling symbol with a number inside found on many plastic items that are not actually recyclable.  In fact, the number is only used to identify what type of plastic resin the item is made of, and does not necessarily mean the item is recyclable in municipal Blue Box Programs.

Size also matters: Hogan says certain items, such as plastic drinking straws and coffee pods for use with single-serving coffee makers like Keurig, Nespresso, and Tassimo are too small to be sorted because they fall through the MRF’s sorting screens. She reports that Peel’s composting facility is currently testing the compostability claim of a plant-based coffee pod that has recently been put on the market. “One of the hardest things about my job is trying to keep up with all the changing material types, since every day manufacturers make something new. Usually we’re the last to learn about these new packaging products,” says Hogan.

Mixed resin challenges
Another factor that thwarts recycling is the combination of many different types of plastic resins in a single package. For instance, because take-out coffee and soft-drink cups typically contain layers of plastic and paper fibre, they cannot be either composted or recycled and must go in the garbage in Peel. Increasingly, Hogan notes, traditional glass bottles, metal cans and paperboard cartons are being replaced by flexible pouches composed of several layers of different plastic resins which are neither recyclable nor reusable. By contrast, she says traditional cartons and glass jars can usually be recycled and reused indefinitely.

Despite these practical realities, the trend to convert from rigid to flexible packaging continues to grow. One presentation during the February 2013 International Converting Exhibition, ICE USA 2013, estimated that the global flexible packaging market, valued at $71 billion in 2011, will grow by around five percent a year, reaching $90 billion in 2016.  It also predicted that North America will be one of the world’s two top regional markets with 25 percent share. (The other is Central/East Asia with 24 percent share.)  

Reasons for this forecasted growth include the myriad of new plastic films and closure mechanisms for flexible packaging that are being introduced into the market.  The combination of laminated plastic layers used in most flexible pouches and bags is also popular because it can be custom designed to suit specific products and retailers.

Generally, flexible packaging also allows more of the entire surface area to be printed than rigid packaging, allowing more space for product promotion. Some flexible packaging also demonstrates superior resistance to damage or defacement during handling, resulting in fewer customer complaints and product returns, and less staff time spent cleaning up broken packages. Additionally, flexible packaging weighs less and takes up less room than rigid packaging, resulting in reduced shelf and storage space, as well as lower transportation costs.

Package life cycle assessment
Ironically, environmental arguments are regularly used to persuade packagers to convert to flexible packaging, since it sometimes takes considerably less energy to produce in contrast to some types of rigid packaging. Additionally, flexible packaging’s relative compactness, which allows for more product per shipment, creates a proportional reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that makes the package environmentally friendly in a different way from the ability to compost or recycle it. Many environmental packaging experts suggest that a complete life cycle assessment, taking into account each aspect of how the package is designed, produced, shipped and disposed of by the consumer, is needed to determine to what extent any package is environmentally sustainable.

Nevertheless, since the end of a package’s life cycle is Hogan’s specialty, she would like to see legislation place more responsibility on packagers to design for both recyclability and compostability. When Peel staff lead waste-plant tours or in-school presentations to students from packaging courses at colleges and universities or industry associations, they urge their audiences to think more about both outcomes when creating their designs. “Find out if municipalities can compost it. Or find out not only if their MRFs can sort it, but also if an end market for it exists.

“We’ve already invested a huge amount of taxpayers’ money to purchase the infrastructure and equipment to process waste. New packaging needs to work with the existing system, or else the only way we will be able to recycle or compost it is to spend a lot more money to expand the facility again with expensive new equipment.”