Karen Moll, print and gift packaging buyer with Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics, and Patrick Keenan, packaging engineer at General Mills (who leads packaging R&D for the Annie’s brand), will be among expert panelists discussing recycled content at SPC Impact 2019 (Apr. 1-4, Seattle, WA), the leading sustainable packaging conference organized by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. Taking place on Tues., Apr. 2, the “Knowledge Café: Scaling Recycled Content Adoption in Packaging” panel discussion will help demystify the world of recycled content.
Here, Moll and Keenan talk about lessons learned, ocean plastic, consumer education and more.
What was your biggest challenge to using recycled-content material in product packaging and how did you solve or overcome it?
As a brand, there were two key areas that were a challenge to implementing recycled content:
1. Educating brand marketers on the value to a ‘’closed-loop system” so they could see the value in it; and
2. Finding a cost-effective, reliable and abundant supply of recycled materials.
The biggest challenge for me was just how resistant many of our print partners were to running 100% recycled paper. I heard a lot in my early days at Lush at how hard it was to get 100% recycled paper—how it would be too expensive, and when there were problems printing, it always came back to the properties of recycled material and we wouldn’t have these problems if it was virgin fiber paper.
I’ve just had to be relentless in our requirements. It’s the line in the sand to do business with Lush and the suppliers who want to work with us find a way to get the 100% recycled paper and run it to our high standards.
What lesson did you learn about incorporating recycled content in your packaging that you wish you had known before you started and why?
It was a bit of a black hole in terms of finding out who was producing 100% recycled paper and what grades existed. Different projects would come up out of the blue that had new paper requirements and then it was scrambling to find paper that worked.
I learned over time to partner with printers that understood our needs and were willing and open to including the mill in our paper discussions so both understood our vision and what we were trying to achieve. Over time I’ve been connecting more and more directly with the mills or reps to have these discussions but could have probably solved some heartache had I started those conversations earlier in my Lush career.
Recycled-content packaging is like any new packaging material a brand is attempting to qualify.
There are many daunting hurdles that a brand needs to overcome to ensure that the packaging is safe for the consumer and does not impact the quality of the product. Tackling each concern one chunk at a time and qualifying it like any other packaging material makes it flow seamlessly through the process.
I have often heard companies in the packaging industry say that the brands aren’t willing to adopt recycled-content materials because of misconceptions around consumer beliefs with regards to appearance or concerns about the supply source. For our brand and consumers, this was/is non-existent, and I really want raw material suppliers and converters to understand that these minor visual defects or perceptions are actually not realized by consumers.
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