Now that we are well into the year of the Wal-Mart Scorecard, companies are setting sustainability targets for packaging. Understanding how targets drive actions and how the outcomes of actions speak to various audiences is essential in establishing appropriate expectations of what we are likely to achieve. For example, a target focused on the reduction of mass packaging may drive actions resulting in cost-effective and lightweight packaging that reduces energy and material needs in the near future—easy benefits to communicate to an audience of managers and customers. But these benefits are largely invisible to consumers who cannot feel the difference in a 10-percent-lighter pack and may not understand the benefit of a more efficient cube. In short, what speaks to one audience might not speak to another.

In a profitable company, it's reasonable to expect that gains in efficiency on an absolute basis will likely be overwhelmed by growth over time. So when efficiency strategies are maxed out, the question becomes, “Did we really make any strides towards more sustainable packaging or were we just less bad?” Instead, we can set targets that encourage actions to develop cost-effective, efficient packaging, recognizing that the benefits of these strategies will plateau. We also set targets to drive us in directions that ensure new options become available in the long-term. In my mind, this dual approach is how we move the dial toward the creation of more sustainable packaging systems. In this scenario, there is commitment to a strategy that doesn't have a payback in the near-term—a difficult case to make to managers. However, one only need look at the US auto industry to see the consequences of not pursuing near- and long-term strategies when they were forewarned that oil is a vulnerable and limited resource.

No issue more clearly represents this tension between near-term payback and the long-term investment than the collection and effective recovery of packaging materials. Despite our best efforts to use less packaging and design for recycling, if we don't support better systems to collect and recover packaging, efforts to improve packaging efficiency will lose steam. The result is that the flawed, underlying system is unchanged, and we continue to design, use and spend money on packaging materials that ultimately get a one-way ticket to a hole in the ground.

To give more than lip service to expectations that we intend to change packaging sustainability, we need to have targets that both align with what we want to achieve and speak to the expectations of our audience. One lesson from 10-plus years of improving the eco-efficiency of packaging in Europe is that consumers are largely unaware of the upstream impacts. If we want consumers to be part of the solution, they need to play a role. Many efficiency measures are communicated within the supply chain but not necessarily with consumers.

434/817-1424, anne.johnson@greenblue.org