This is an opinion piece published in Børsen Bæredygtig on 19 June 2024.
The opinion piece was written by Morten Harboe-Jepsen, CEO, Retur; Mette Staal, Cluster Creative Lead, DS Smith; and Helle Dollerup Lyngaa Wegeberg, Creative Director, Cameleon Creatives.
Preparations for the upcoming producer responsibility scheme are well under way. With 41,000 companies affected and 1.1 million tonnes of packaging annually, this is the first time in 100 years that action is being taken at scale to incentivise better packaging management with a focus on reuse and recycling.
In 1922, the breweries entered into a voluntary agreement to use a common bottle for beer, and this marked the beginning of the development of the deposit and return system.
So the idea of managing packaging for the common good – whether the agenda is commercial or sustainable, or both(!) – is not new. But we must not stop here, because we have much more to gain than simply complying with producer responsibility.
Once producer responsibility for packaging has been systematised, everyday life will return. And when that happens, companies can benefit from further future-proofing their packaging.
Producer responsibility contains both a stick and a carrot through a volume-based and differentiated fee structure. The more packaging, the higher the fee. The more difficult the packaging is to recycle, the higher the fee. If a company becomes good at complying with producer responsibility, it will therefore save money.
But this fee saving is small change compared with the consequences of doing no more than the bare minimum. We are looking into a future where awareness of resources and the environment will become a given for consumers and society as a whole.
As a company, you can still receive praise today for sustainable initiatives, but that window is closing. Developments will move quickly, and taking a wait-and-see position now could turn into an outright rejection by consumers, the public sector and business partners within just a few years.
It is a difficult balancing act for each individual company to run a business while also driving sustainable change.
But what if we short-circuit the usual competitive situation in packaging and major players join forces to make decisions that may be difficult?
What if they agree to set requirements for producers, suppliers and business partners that their use of packaging must be circular rather than commercial?
If we look back at history, such a scenario is certainly possible. In 2002, the breweries and the grocery retail sector agreed to include single-use packaging in the deposit and return system, even though there was no legislation in this area.
The retail sector in particular, led by the major grocery retailers, could create change at scale. The same applies to the transport sector. And what if the state, regions and municipalities began setting common requirements for packaging?
Over the next few years, the implementation of producer responsibility for packaging will be at the centre of attention. But after that, there is no reason to wait before introducing new initiatives.
So what does this transition look like? Companies move from a mainly commercial perspective to a distinctly circular perspective, where the question of what will happen to the packaging when it becomes waste becomes a central part of the overall basis for decision-making.
The amount of packaging will be reduced. After that, companies will look at packaging types. Can plastic, for example, be replaced with cardboard? If cardboard is given a thin plastic coating, it actually becomes waterproof, and as long as the coating remains below 5%, the cardboard can still be recycled.
We will also see changes in the communication on packaging. There will be fewer colours. Fonts and logos will change so that less printing ink is needed, and we will have to get used to black being less black, because when creating a very deep black, in some cases up to 150% more printing ink may be used.
The air will also seep out of the packaging. On average, there is 7% air in the transport packaging used for food. In e-commerce, the average is 20%. If the amount of air is reduced, fewer journeys will be needed.
The above is just a small selection of the things that are likely to happen. The good news is that, at the time of writing, new solutions and sustainable technologies are being developed that will make even far-reaching requirements relatively manageable to comply with.
But someone still has to make the decisions, and those decisions must be made jointly, so that we both reduce and change the composition of the 1.1 million tonnes of packaging waste we create every year here in Denmark.