Hello, and thank you so much for joining us today.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET and NOSH, and I'm pleased to welcome you to the Nombase Podcast.
Be sure to check out nombase.com, BevNET's platform for the CPG community, featuring our partner directory, job board, press release hub, and of course, this very podcast, which brings us all together today.
On today's show, we are going to be talking about sustainability and beverage packaging, a topic that continues to drive consumer interest yet remains confusing.
From unclear claims to growing skepticism around recycling, especially among younger consumers, it's not always clear what sustainable really means, or if it's even influencing purchase decisions.
This conversation is a companion to a BevNET article written by our managing editor, Martin Caballero, who's joining us today, along with Simon Gainey, owner of Hard Working Packaging, and Benjamin Puncher, Global Packaging Insights Director at Mintel.
Thank you all so much for joining us today.
Again, this is going to be a great conversation.
Marty, let's start with you.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you've learned as you've been reporting on this topic?
To say the least, it's certainly a huge topic.
I think one of the things that became apparent to me pretty early on in doing reporting on this article is that sustainability doesn't really have a strict definition and doesn't have the kind of easy fit that consumers, that that's the kind of thing that they like and people in general, we like to know what we're doing and feel good about what we're doing.
Sustainability, especially when it comes to beverage packaging, is a really complex issue.
Part of the purpose of this article was to sort of give people in the industry a little bit of the lay of the land to sort of weigh things in terms of pros and cons, benefits and disadvantages, because there really is no ideal fit for sustainable packaging.
It's going to vary depending on your product.
It's going to vary depending on things that are completely outside of your control, including municipal recycling policies, international recycling policies, the price of oil.
There's a lot of things that go into the sustainability or lack thereof in a particular package.
Brands and producers can make decisions that work for them, but there's never going to be, or it seems unlikely that there's going to be a panacea that's going to be sustainable by definition for everyone.
Well, I'm certainly looking forward to decoding some of the confusion, so thanks for that.
I would also like to introduce our two guests today.
We have Simon Gainey.
You are the owner of Hard Working Packaging.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background and the kind of work that you do?
Yes.
Good afternoon.
We spend a lot of time at the front end of the consumer products innovation cycle, helping CPGs, brands, think through what choices around packaging there are.
It's not just obviously about sustainability, it's every dimension.
Hence the name Hard Working Packaging.
The notion that if we can get it to work at shelf in consumers' hands for customers, for the manufacturer, for the environment, then it's in essence working hard.
We spend a lot of time one-on-ones, focus groups, ethnos, with consumers.
Knee deep in the realities of the great compromise between choices and sustainability in the environment.
Then also designing and developing and executing and testing some of those ideas with those corporations.
Well, we're also excited to benefit from all that hard work that you are doing.
Benjamin Puncher, you are over there at Mintel.
Can you tell us a little bit about your role and the kind of information that you're tracking to?
Certainly, yeah.
Thanks for inviting me here today.
My name is Benjamin Puncher.
I'm the Global Packaging Insights Director at Mintel.
And if you haven't heard of us, we're a market research company that focuses on innovation.
So we have a global new products database, where we look at new launches and see how a brand's responding to the challenges that they're facing.
And we talk to consumers to see what's the mind of the consumer.
And I think one of the real strengths that we have is we can track, you know, what are the consumers thinking, how a brand's responding, and how is that successful?
And sometimes how is it not successful?
And in, as we heard from Martin, the sustainability landscape is so broad and so confusing, even for us experts sometimes, that it's no wonder that this is an area that consumers are struggling to engage with sometimes.
And we're kind of at the cusp of where, you know, if we don't get it right, they're just going to fall into cynicism, and we're just, whatever we do will be seen as greenwashing.
So let's try and get it right.
Stay away from all the cynicism today, for sure.
We will make sure to do that.
Well, let's dive right in.
Simon, let's start with you.
I would love to hear what even makes packaging sustainable and what defines it as sustainable.
What does sustainable even mean?
Pass.
Can I have a pass, Melissa, on that one?
It's very amorphous, right?
It's not very easy to define.
On a big grand scale, it's all about minimizing the impact on the environment, through the complete life cycle.
Everything from the materials it's made from and sourced from through to its end of life.
I think that practically comes down for the packaging industry into minimizing the waste, minimizing the outcomes, the pollution that comes from that or the by-products that come from that.
Then also good stewardship of the resources that goes into that.
But I find that phrase in itself very tricky.
It's not very consumer centric.
It's very difficult.
Even for people like me that worked in this industry for 30 years, we all struggle with, so what does it mean?
I think I've learned over the years that the consumers have distilled that down a little bit into things that they can process and make sense and do something about.
And obviously, we'll talk about that a little later on.
And to distill down the materials themselves, are we mostly talking about glass, PET, cartons, aluminum?
Is there anything missing?
You know, I actually, this is going to be a bit of a shift, but I actually discourage the conversation about direct comparison between materials, because you'll get huge amount of people in the luminant industry, huge amount of people in the glass industry.
There's fiber people all over the place.
There's the PET.
There's so much vested interest in those material choices, that it depends on how you slice the data, how you cook the data, how you look at the data, where you are in the world.
What's your comparison point?
And I think many years ago, I came across a phrase that really sustainability is about reducing our reliance on single-use items, and single-use being something that you make fresh, you dispose of, and that's it.
And so aluminum, fiberboard, paperboard, cartonboard, glass, and PET, all can get to a point where you're reusing and reusing cleverly.
And so particularly for a smaller CPG brand that's started up or in early phase, sometimes it's all about, how do I think about each of those choices from our encouraging reuse?
And for me, that's much more powerful and much more easy for everybody to understand than us talking about bauxite mining in Chile or plant-based resins, and what happens to them when they biodegrade, or glass weights and distribution costs associated with glass.
Because there's no answer to that.
And some will argue with that, obviously, when you get into it.
So I actually think from a beverage industry point of view, it's important, particularly for young brands, to think much more about encouraging recycling, much more about using recycled content, because that's the bit that drives value in the recycling process.
If I produce demand for recycled materials, that's going to drive the price up of those recycled materials, which means there's a financial interest for the MRF or the recycler to collect and process those.
Obviously, things like weight reduction and good common use of materials and sensible use of materials, which the beverage industry tends to have been pretty good over the years.
Not answering your question, Alyssa.
I think the answer is about single use and reuse, not about making choices and comparisons between these three materials.
If I can jump in there, I'm glad you asked Simon first, what is sustainable packaging?
Because it is a horrible question.
I think I agree with many of the points that Simon makes.
Also, I think just the language you use is interesting, and increasingly, I'm moving away from talking about sustainable packaging to about responsible packaging.
I think it just changes the debate from sustainability, which has been around, it's a term we've been using for a long time, it has quite specific meanings about material source, whereas responsible changes us to thinking about, how can I be responsible about this material?
Also, how can we all be responsible?
Then whatever solution we deliver, we can't escape the fact that the consumer is a cog in that wheel and they have to get it right.
So whatever we do has to align with their needs, their desires, their ability to act, and their ability to act is often aligned to what their concerns are.
So.
Well, why don't we dive right into the consumer angle here?
I mean, certainly without consumers, the brands wouldn't be selling the products that they are, so it's a really important demographic to drill down into.
What is the consumer perception of sustainability and how does that drive the choices that they make when they're purchasing?
Well, I think we've obviously seen over the past five, six years, a real ramping up of consumer concern around the environmental impact of packaging.
It's been driven by our awareness of plastic in the ocean, the microplastics that are potentially impacting our health.
And so a lot of the consumer focus is around plastic as a material, and we can't escape that.
So that's where we need to focus.
Now, what's interesting is how consumers have different kind of ideas about how they engage with sustainability and what it means for them.
So I'm thinking younger consumers who, they've grown up with the environment being really important to them, so they're really attuned to that.
But actually, they're cash poor, they're time poor, it's not a priority for them when it comes to their actions.
So they reward companies who say, we're doing the work for you.
They will buy something that says, we have done something with our packaging to make it more sustainable.
With older consumers, they have more time on their hands, they're more able to devote some time to action, so they're the people who actually recycle more.
So again, we can start to think about who it is we're targeting, what are their actions and their thought processes, and how can we then deliver a solution that actually speaks to that, to make sure that that cog in the wheel is doing the part that we need it to deliver.
We see growing concern around climate change, for example, and again, that starts to bring in some different nuances.
Are we going to see a shift away from plastic being the core thing I'm focusing on, and reducing my plastic footprint, being more responsible, and actually introducing an element of energy use because of my concern around my carbon footprint?
And then it's a whole other story around, well, what are the high-energy pack types?
It might be aluminium, it might be glass here, that I'm starting to focus on as being negative.
We also know that consumers are concerned about water shortages and water quality, and some pack materials, like paper, use quite high water users in their processing and production.
So again, if that becomes a concern for consumers, something that at the moment gets almost a free pass.
We all love paper, it feels sustainable, it comes from plants, it comes from trees, that's a very nice story.
But if our focus is on water shortages, well then that might start to negatively impact our perception of that.
So again, there's a lot of different things that we need to consider, and one of those is, actually, what is the consumer concern about right now?
It's a great point that BevNET is making, and just to go back to what we were saying before, I really like that description of, rather than sustainable, responsible packaging, what countries are accepting recycling, export, and how many new processing facilities are being built, and what they can do, or contamination of our pet, and all these different factors.
So I think, for the consumer's perspective, they want to feel like they are making a good choice.
They're not gonna be doing all the research into boxite mining and stuff like that.
They want to, at the shelf, make like, feel like they're making a responsible good choice.
And I think it's incumbent on the brands and the packaging themselves to sort of communicate that.
And we've seen the statistics that really reflect that consumers are willing to pay a premium for products that are marketed as sustainable.
We've seen that products with sustainability claims are growing faster than those without.
And we've even seen that, I'm referring to a study that was done by Nielsen and McKinsey, and that showed that even a multitude of different claims on a package, if they were specific as to what, you know, addressing a particular aspect of ecology or recyclability or some part of environmental claim, consumers responded well to that, to multiple claims on the package.
I think consumers are looking to make the best choice possible, and the statistics bear out that they're willing to spend a little bit more and search a little bit more to achieve those things.
I think that really kind of reinforces what we see at Mintel.
I think what's really interesting is, it's not just that there are some consumers who will pay more for environmentally friendly packaging, and that's great, we can target those, but realistically, they're a small subset, and the majority of people kind of, value is important, and they're not going to pay more, but what's changed, and what's really obvious now compared to only a few years ago, is shoppers are reporting that when they're making decisions in-store, sustainability of the packaging is something that factors into their consideration.
Now, it might be that not that they're going to pay more for one brand over another because the packaging is sustainable, but if they're making a choice between two brands and all other things being equal, that factors into their choice.
Five, six years ago, it would be, can I afford it, is it a brand that I want, and is it a flavor profile that suits me?
Tick, tick, tick, job done.
Now, we've got, where am I going to consume it on the go at home?
So, we've got this massive proliferation of pack sizes, and does it tick my ethical concerns, and generally around packaged goods, that is the packaging sustainable.
So, we might not actually improve our margins, but actually what we can do is stand out against our competitors as being ticking that box at the point of purchase and speaking to the shopper.
The final point on that is if we're speaking to the shopper, we really need to make sure that this message is front of pack where they can see it.
Gone are the days when our recycling message is a little logo that we stick on the back of the pack next to the barcode because the marketing department think it's not important enough to devote any quality space to.
We need to devote quality space on the packaging to make that conversation clear to the shopper as well as to the consumer.
And Benjamin, do you have any data that would help us understand the kinds of claims that consumers respond to the most on the front of pack?
Is it recyclable?
Is it made with recycled content?
Are there any particular claims that do resonate with consumers and that they actually do understand?
I think that actually what we see is not that there's claims that they understand, but they report they don't really understand much.
That's what really comes through is there was a lot of confusion and particularly actually amongst younger consumers about the claims on packs.
Really, that's just a call for clarity and a call for making sure we're explaining what we've done and what the impact of that.
But the other thing is to understand what is that message saying to the consumer in terms of who's taking responsibility here and therefore who gets to take the points for that action.
Now, what I mean by that is, if we provide a pack to a consumer that says this is recyclable, well, that's great.
That's a high gene factor in many cases because in beverages, consumers have a very high expectation it's going to be recyclable.
But they're the person who's going to take that empty pack and put it in the recycle bin.
That's a benefit for them to feel good about the environment.
Another message, say for example, we've included recycled content or we've reformulated the bottle to use 20% less plastic.
Well, that's a brand action that shows brand responsibility.
So again, thinking about not just what the message is, but who's kind of winning there in terms of, is this the brand saying, great, we've done some things and we're fulfilling your ethical requirements, or are we simply enabling the consumer?
Do you know specifically, are there any claims that consumers...
I'm just thinking if I had my own brand and I was trying to figure out what to put on that label, any thoughts on what direction I should head in?
Well, certainly there are things I'd steer you away from.
And those are ones where they sound really ideal, but they have limited actionability for the consumer.
One that I really think about a lot is compostability and biodegradability.
When we talk to consumers, we actually get a really high response saying, we think this is a really great solution.
So that would sort of suggest, oh, well, that's a route we need to go down because consumers really love it.
But one, it's based on a misapprehension.
Consumers think that that means that when the packaging leaves their hand, it kind of dissolves away into nothing.
What a lovely solution.
It's guilt-free because at the end of the day, this disappears and that doesn't actually happen.
And then the other thing we had, the added frustration is that actually when consumers find out they can't just throw it in their standard bin and it will disappear in landfill.
They have to put it somewhere where it can industrially compost.
Well, who has access to that kind of route?
So it's a frustration.
It ends up being something that actually annoys a consumer because they can't put it in the two solutions they've got, which is landfill, not ideal, but they can do it, or recycling.
Keeping it simple is really important.
And realistically, we have to remember that it's not just consumers, it's not just brands, but legislation is pushing us down.
The circularity route towards recyclability.
So if I had to sort of suggest one thing, it would be as a baseline, as a hygiene factor, as the price to play, go towards being recyclable and being simply recyclable.
Allow consumers to put it in the curbside recycling, no take back to store, no send back to producer, none of that malarkey, because consumers realistically aren't going to do that.
When they say, I want to recycle, they mean, I want to do it easily, efficiently and in the home.
We mentioned greenwashing.
It's an interesting factor because as these more claims and more certifications and things come out, it'd be interesting to see, you know, particularly among, you know, Gen Z and younger consumers, sort of their response to that, having grown up hearing about sustainability and recyclability all their lives, and yet still feeling like progress maybe hasn't, you know, matched some of the ambitions of the people who have been pushing those things.
It was interesting that Boxed Water, which produces, you know, water and cartons, they did a study a couple of years ago, and that showed that, you know, millennials were really quite apathetic about the impact of recycling, about sort of if their belief that putting their empty vessel into the recycling stream was actually going to make a difference.
And so, and they actually, you know, recycle less than older generations, according to this study.
And now we're in a climate where things are highly politicized.
I mean, paper straws are now a political flashpoint.
Consumers' interpretation of these messages that they're getting has changed over time and may continue to change going forward.
Simon, I'm going to ask you another question that you're really going to hate.
So, if I'm a brand, I have a delicious liquid and I need to put it in a container.
And I, you know, I don't want to be a jerk.
I want to take into consideration sustainability aspects.
I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing, but I don't want to do it at the cost of throwing my margin way out of whack.
I want to make sure that the material is appropriate to hold the beverage and there's no degradation.
And I also want to make sure that consumers either care about the route that I'm taking or that its impact on margin and manufacturing is so minimal that it almost doesn't matter.
How do you even begin to solve that problem as a brand?
That was a really short question there, Melissa.
Thank you.
I think that's the meaning of life, isn't it?
That one.
One of the things that I've learned doing this for 25 odd years, spending all that time with consumers, and particularly in the last five years, is that sustainability in our definition isn't this thing that's driving all of these purchase decisions.
I like the way Ben put it, which is that if everything else is equal, then we can have a conversation about it.
But what we often find with consumers is they want everything just the same, and that they don't really want to compromise anything.
I'm using a generalization as well because there are more activists, more actively involved, and there are people that are completely passive and not engaged at all.
But typically, you see them wanting all the performance in the world.
What does the package choice communicate about that product and brand?
What does it say about its impurity, the message, the design of it?
How does that communicate what the brand want from it?
How well does it work and function for what I want to use it for, and where I want to go, and who's going to use it?
All these who, where, what, when, and how are factors that are way more important than is it glass or plastic, is it aluminum?
Sometimes those can be equal and so you can make a decision.
But in my view, a lot of food and beverage in total is all about not offering them a compromise.
If you offered them a beverage package that didn't stand up, we'd all go, well, why would you do that?
If you offered one that didn't close, but massive sustainable benefits and not closing, it's probably not going to sell.
I think it boils down to is, what do I do with this once I'm finished?
Where does it go?
Can I do it quickly and easily without too much thought?
Don't ask me to strip a label off.
Don't ask me to take the cap and somehow figure out where that goes.
They want it to not be over-packaged.
They want it to be sensibly, responsibly packaged in terms of it's not got a lot of frills and extras because then it feels wasteful or it feels half empty.
In beverage, that's not quite so much.
They know that almost half of all these containers don't make it to recycling because I think at the end of the day, the brand has to do what's right for the brand, right for the quality, right for the profile of the beverage and then think about this, how do I make sure that I promote this non-single use?
How do I get it to be reused and recycled correctly?
Because then they're doing everything in their power to influence that, you know, just walk through the grocery store, look at where the recycle symbol and the different types of recycle symbol sit on packaging.
Typically, it's the back, it's at the bottom, it's in amongst tons of text.
Doesn't that communicate something to consumers about how important it is to the brand?
To me, it does.
And there are sometimes, you know, people talk about recycle content and I've talked to consumers quite a lot about that and they sort of understand it and it's a powerful argument, the fact that I'm using recycled content.
But how many people really make that a key part of their communication?
And it's obvious why not, right?
Their profit motive, their growth motive, sort of clashes with sustainable motives sometimes because sustainable packaging is more expensive.
Often there are assets that don't run it as fast.
I mean, if you watch a PET bottle filling line, you barely see the bottle that's going so fast.
You look at other forms of lines and it's quite chuggy by comparison, perhaps not canning.
But so I think there's always this compromise in the brands that the sustainable costs you more typically.
Sometimes it's less mainstream, so it costs you more.
Sometimes it requires investment.
And yet you're on the hook this month and this quarter for volume and profit and growth.
And I think those two sort of unresolved a little bit for many brands.
I think Simon made a bunch of great points there.
The one that just kind of jumped out to me while thinking about it is, you know, Coca-Cola, obviously a huge company, made a big push last year.
100% are PET bottles, putting it on the label, putting it on, you know, campaigning around it.
At the same time, they were ranked as the largest known contributor of plastic waste in the world.
So, you know, it's sort of one of column A, a lot of column B, or it's a really hard thing to reconcile.
And especially when there's communications, you know, it feels great to pick up that bottle and know that it's 100% recycled PET doesn't feel so good when you go home and you see that, you know, this company is also one of the largest contributors to plastic waste.
So it's certainly a difficult act to balance.
It's not great for combating the cynicism here.
I think there's also sort of an interesting dynamic, right?
So if you think about EPR and what that's going to do, that's going to push money into the infrastructure, hopefully.
And, you know, recycling rates are pretty poor.
If you look across municipalities, it's quite shocking how even CAN formats that have been around and recycled for centuries, well, for many tens of years, and yet we still find people putting it into the trash can or going into landfill.
You know, and I think the more that we incentivize and push money into that collection and recycling and then the end markets of those recycled materials, the end game then sits nicely with this idea that we're reusing those materials and that they are recyclable.
So I think that the state of flux that exists today, tomorrow, next year, next five years, in the infrastructure and collection and reusing, if you predict, it's probably got to go to much more sophistication, right?
It's just time that's the killer here.
This long-term idea that I can't have single use, and thus I need to do everything possible so that I fit with a reusable system, to me seems like a long strategy that gets you in a good place in the long run.
And that's the advice I would give anybody versus pick and choosing between materials, picking and choosing just on profit and loss.
You got to do what's right for the brand, what's right to communicate, what's right for the consumer target you're going for.
Yeah, a long-winded answer to a long question, Melissa.
I hope that helps.
Thank you.
Marty, you just mentioned Coca-Cola.
I'm sure that there are many other brands that you've had your eye on as you've been putting this article together.
Are there any beverage brands out there that you've noticed are doing a good job, both marketing their sustainability initiatives and finding packaging that works for their brand?
Yeah.
I think the big example that jumps out to me is Liquid Death, which I'm sure people know about from reading BevNET.
When Liquid Death came out, certainly the marketing and brand positioning was a big aspect of what the brand represented.
It was really just water in a can, as everyone knows.
But their Death to Plastic campaign, which was really a centerpiece of that, I think was really effective.
And we've seen that because we've seen in the years since Liquid Death's arrival on the scene, we've seen really an explosion or definitely proliferation of other water brands specifically using aluminum can packaging.
But I think Liquid Death did a good job because I think it tapped into those things that people are very visceral and understandable.
We're talking a lot about a lot of statistics and sort of nebulous science.
People understand the beach full of plastic waste on it.
That has been effective because it's going back to what we said, it's sort of helping people feel like they're making a responsible choice.
People can associate water bottles and single use bottle water as bad.
Plastic is the most common vessel for that.
Here's a different one, here's an alternative.
We're also giving some money back to environmental organizations and funding some kind of environmental support, which is another interesting aspect.
A lot of brands have come out and said, hey, we're giving 1% for the planet, we're funding ocean cleanups, we're removing one plastic bottle that's going to go into the waste stream.
So I would say Liquid Death.
I would say Pathwater, which is an interesting one as well.
They've really emphasized the reusability.
It's an aluminum bottled water.
They're really promoting it as something you can use more than once and positioning it in that way.
So yeah, there's definitely been brands that have tapped into it in an interesting way, and it really comes back to making people feel positive and responsible at the point of purchase.
Just to add to your example of Liquid Death, which I think is a really good example and actually came to my mind as well.
They have a really simple recycling message on pack, but it's really impactful and it fits really nicely with the brand.
It's simply recycle or die.
I mean, what an impactful thing to say on your packaging.
So yeah, I think this idea that some of these messages have to be very, you know, explanatory and they'll be targeted and actionable, etc.
Sometimes, actually, just think about your brand and how the language that you're using can actually be really supportive of the kind of position you've got.
It's a powerful message.
It actually says something I think is true, you know.
We have a limited amount of resources.
If we don't use them rightly, it will impact on our ability to live on this planet.
So yeah, it's quite strong, but why not recycle or die?
I would say Boxed Water, another one that pretty clearly, and that's where, you know, Stark packaging, Simple Carton, Boxed Water is better.
You know, I think, Martin, I think that idea or the connection between what's my brand personality and the material choice that I make actually is a pretty strong one, right?
Because there are some brands, I think to GT, right?
Kombucha.
I think like that grew up and has been, you imagine it's formulation, it's history, it's ethos, it's brand message has always been around glass and what glass pervades, what it says about the drink inside, what it says about the brand.
And I think that often is the choice when you're thinking about material.
It's not only a sustainable choice, but what naturally fits with the voice and the brand positioning that makes sense.
And so Liquid Death, you can see it, right?
It feels very Ken-like almost by the way they've created that personality.
The other thing I wanted to note, it is true that if you talk to consumers, particularly in the US, there's a lot of noise about plastics.
And the noise is environmental, right?
Because they see the baby turtles, they see the waste on beaches, they see the storylines and they're taken by that.
And often they relate to that really well.
The idea of using ocean plastic, I've seen consumers react totally into that idea because it's very tangible, it's very real.
They can see it, they've seen it, they've got the reference and the fact that you're out there dragging the ocean, pulling it in, reusing it, feels to Ben's point, just like a fabulous thing to do.
But there's another underlying sense around health as well that comes with plastic.
And it's a little bit of a skepticism.
But this idea, and you'll hear it, people talk a little bit in groups around toxins and scalping and just the increase of plastic in your diet.
Now, I don't, I'm not a scientist.
I can't attribute those.
But the noise coming from consumers is that they're definitely, definitely, definitely making the connection.
And, you know, it can be sustainability, but it can also be human health.
You know, the rise of cancer and all of those things that are also triggering that anti-plastic movement.
And to some degree, we got obsessed with plastic and it became everything to every man everywhere.
So, you know, I think it's not just sustainability that drives this push away.
Simon, you just asked yourself a question that I was going to ask you.
The easy one, maybe.
But that's exactly it.
I think certainly health is something that would absolutely drive consumers to make decisions in packaging.
And, you know, for example, I'm curious.
Microplastics, I see and hear about them absolutely everywhere.
I think, you know, I saw that statistic that we all have the amount of plastic, of a plastic spoon in our bodies or whatever it was.
But if we're consuming something out of our PET or virgin plastic or a combination of the two, for example, are you more or less likely to consume microplastics?
Does it matter?
I think there's some work to do to unpeel that onion, if you like, because the source of that plastic probably majority isn't from packaging, right?
It's from paints and tires and fabrics, the things that we wear, the things that we put in our mouth as well, obviously.
But I think there's more to learn that we just don't understand on that subject.
Packaging is an easy one, right?
Because it feels frivolous to us.
But I think the source of those microplastics is everywhere and everything.
But I think it's something, it's a concern, right?
And I think consumers reflect that concern.
And that's why things like glass and aluminum and paperboard, in their minds, I'm not talking technically now, but in their minds, feels like a better human health choice for them.
And that can be just as important as a sustainable good for the planet choice.
Because, you know, the reality of those is there is some ugly truth behind that, right?
Because there is plastic in cans, there's plastic in cartons, glass is this heavyweight monster, as Ben outlined, there's lots of twos and froze on all those things.
But it certainly feels better than just plastic for many of these consumers.
Benjamin, are you hearing consumers respond to sustainability and packaging from a health point of view?
The point that Simon pulled out is that glass is, you know, the pinnacle of the packaging that is the most healthy, it's the least impactful, it's the one that we know is completely inert and it doesn't interact with our products.
So that association is there.
But I don't think it's hugely strong at the moment in terms of the source of microplastics I'm getting is the physical bottle that I'm drinking from.
Now, that bottle may end up being pollution, being litter, ending up somewhere, it might turn into the microplastic that comes back to bite me.
But I don't see consumers at the moment being too concerned about that point of contamination.
I think that could change going forward.
It's always evolving.
But I think it also comes a little bit with kind of a warning here, because Simon pulled out a really good point, which is that packaging isn't actually the biggest source of microplastics out there.
I mean, carpets, clothing, as you said, tie runoff, there's a lot of sources of microplastics.
And if we can reduce any of that coming from packaging, that's good.
But if you talk to consumers, they kind of think it all comes from packaging.
And let's think about other things that are similar to that.
At the moment, I'm hearing a lot in the news about Forever Chemicals and about health concerns.
And I'm thinking, this reminds me of several years ago, when we were talking about microplastics in the same way and that we were just learning about them.
And we suddenly found out, oh, they're everywhere.
And we suddenly found out we've got them in our bodies and they're starting to impact our health.
Are we at a similar sort of stage with some of these Forever Chemicals?
Is it going to snowball into a big thing?
Now, Forever Chemicals, just as with microplastics, come from the carpets that we walk on.
They come from the clothes we wear, the tools we use to cook and eat.
But consumers, are they going to focus, just as they have with plastics, on packaging the thing that they have some control over?
The thing, I think Simon used the term, it's the frivolous extra that we get when we buy something that we don't feel we need.
And therefore, that is a source of potential problem.
Well, it reminds me a little bit of the BPA free interest and sort of that snowball that exploded now.
All the water bottles and all this packaging was promoting BPA free, BPA free.
And just in the context of this conversation, I mean, that was something that I think consumers, even if they couldn't tell you exactly the breakdown of what a BPA was, they understand, this is not good for me, BPA free is good for me, BPA free, I'm excited about that.
So I definitely see a little bit of echoes of that.
Well, I certainly see a lot of opportunity and a lot of decisions to make for the brands out there, but hopefully this conversation has informed our audience.
Marty Caballero, Simon Gainey, and Benjamin Puncher, thank you so much for joining the show today.
Thank you to our audience for tuning in.
We hope you found this information useful.
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