Your end-user customers, Fortune 1000 companies, are under growing pressure from investors, markets, consumers, regulators and other stakeholders to address climate change and the challenges of sustainability. As with most business drivers, though, the solutions will be found farther back up the supply chain. And that means you—the package printers and converters supplying consumer-product companies with everything from pouches, cartons, labels and corrugated cases.

Fortunately, more and more examples of well thought-out approaches to providing sustainable packaging are coming to light. Three converters on the leading edge offered an inside look at their strategies and operations during last month's FFTA Forum 2007 in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. Not surprisingly, all three businesses are focused on paper and paperboard.

Putting the “green” in “green” converting—or making economic sense from this whole adventure—means being part of the solution, says Barbara G. McCutchan, Ph.D., Enterprise Stewardship & Sustainability director of Glen Allen, VA-based MeadWestvaco Corp. She should know. The paperboard-converting giant has been ranked “Best in Class” for Containers & Packaging by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the second year in a row.

“The sourcing of materials for packaging and the converting and manufacturing of the package all impact the environmental and social aspects of bringing goods to the consumer,” McCutchan says. So, what is the proper role for converters and package printers? It begins with assessing your company's strengths and opportunities in the lifecycle of sustainable packaging, she explains. That lifecycle includes five major points (See Converter's Role box.)

For raw-materials sourcing and use, MeadWestvaco forestlands are independently certified to internationally recognized standards, and the converter actively pursues development and use of bio-based and recycled materials. In design and manufacturing, sustainability benefits are optimized at the get-go, and MeadWestvaco plants have met legally-binding CO2 emissions-reduction targets since 2003, McCutchan says. Cost-effective transportation and delivery systems to minimize environmental impact are almost a given for any converter.

Downstream recovery processes at MeadWestvaco include using reclaimed or recycled content where desired, improving package-recycling characteristics via design, coating or ink alternatives, and enhancing consumer recycling ease by optimizing the use of widely acceptable materials, she explains. Lastly, in returning to the raw-material stage of converting, the company offers a range of paperboard options that use pre- and post-consumer recycled fiber.

“By contributing sustainable choices in the supply chain, you can be part of the solution” to the growing consumer and retailer demand for sustainable packaging, McCutchan says.

“Over the last two years, National Envelope has embarked on an aggressive campaign to implement proven and credible sustainability measures within its facilities,” says Rick Hun-toon, vice president of marketing for Uniondale, NY-based National Envelope Corp., proudly, “and in the process has become the greenest envelope company on the planet. Meeting the sustainability challenge head-on for its own benefits was the only course of action that made sense.”

“Green converting” is not a fad, Huntoon believes, and envelope and package printers have no choice. On the plus side, sustainable business practices have several very real, quantifiable and achievable qualities, he says. Among them—increased revenue, cost savings and a higher return-on-investment than traditional types of investments—all ways of getting “green” out of going “green.”

“The first in will have a significant competitive advantage,” Huntoon says. In the longer term, “sustainable development produces a sustainable advantage” for companies implementing such programs.

Want to “green up” your products quickly? There are several reasonably priced options already available—many focused on their certification. (See Certification Providers box). For envelope makers, certified materials include Plastics Suppliers' polylactic acid-based EarthFirst® PLA (www.earthfirstpla.com) and Multi-Plastics' cellulose-derived Envirosafe (www.multi-plastics.com) window films. Many non-certified materials, such as soy inks, recycled and recyclable papers, and tree-free paper, are also on the market.

Certification adds vital credibility to your claims of more sustainable packaging, Huntoon advises, and annual audits by the certification providers are helping to verify the ongoing viability of these programs. If you're challenged by customers, the certifying bodies can help substantiate your claims.

It's ironic that using less material for sustainability reasons will actually make a converter more money in the long run, but that's part of the plan at Chicago-based corrugated-packaging giant Smur-fit-Stone Container Corp.

“The papermaking process has been evolving ever since papyrus was first beaten into sheets several thousand years ago,” says Wayne K. Huttle, director of environmental support programs at Smurfit-Stone. “More recent improvements focus on reducing the use of raw materials and energy through efficiencies in recovery cycles.

“Our business depends on a closed-loop, sustainable fiber source,” he adds. Currently, about 77 percent of the corrugated containers produced in the US is recovered, and corrugated containers average 43 percent recycled fiber. Since 1993, the amount of paper going to landfills has remained roughly the same—about 37 million tons a year, while recovered tonnage has increased from 35 million in 1993 to 50 million tons last year.

Relatively simple changes in package design and applied materials can go a long way to achieving profitable and sustainable packaging for end-user customers, Huttle explains. One design-change example he offered resulted in a 17-percent reduction in corrugated, 50-percent less sealing tape needed and an 11-percent increase in pallet box count.

In another example, a materials switch for a traditional carded-blister pack meant the replacement of all PVC material with a more consumer-desirable, recycled-PET clamshell. The new easily-opened, recycled-corrugated pack's materials are now all simple to separate for another round of recycling.

Donald Carli doesn't mince words. As one of the FFTA Forum's keynote speakers, the senior research fellow with the Institute for Sustainable Communication called printing—in whatever form—“the most important industry in the world” and asked attendees to “consider life for one day without print.” Hard to imagine, right?

But now, along with that responsibility, Carli professes that sustainability is “the new IQ test for management,” and he challenges converters to become “the first search result in Google for 'sustainable flexography.'” [At presstime, it was an FFTA press release on Carli's own speech.]

Taking a leap into the future in the sustainable packaging session, Carli addressed the evolving science of sustainable print, printed electronics—and power sources. “Printers can expect energy costs to continue to rise, and they can expect Fortune 1000 clients to starting asking how big their carbon footprint is and how they plan to offset or reduce it,” he says. “Some printers…are assembling the resources required to address sustainability through print applications in the emerging fields of printed electronics and intelligent packaging.”

Some examples today are active-RFID tags and labels, thin-film batteries and photovoltaic arrays. “Almost all of these products will be printed, flexible, laminar constructions produced using printing processes such as gravure, flexo, inkjet and screen printing rather than silicon, semiconductor-manufacturing methods.”

Clearly, these four lessons show that being considered a “green converter” means much more than just using recycled paper or soy-based inks. But the opportunities are also there for companies with a thorough, strategic plan to make money—while becoming “green.”

For more on Green Converting, see “Flex-pack plates go 'green' — fast” at Pliant Corp. on page 24.