Packaging the future – do Tetra Pak and WWF have the answer?

Despite increasing signals that the Earth is inching dangerously close to an ecological “tipping point”, the amount of refuse we produce continues to grow – and one of the biggest problems is packaging.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), packaging the world over accounts for roughly one-third of commercial and municipal waste. In 2007, the UK sent roughly 10 million tons of packaging waste to landfill; the previous year, the US equivalent was around 80 million tons.

Meanwhile, unprecedented consumer demand from industrialising countries is increasing the strain on the natural resources that are used for packaging. A direct result has been that trade in illegal timber products is on the rise. Gaining access to forests via corrupt means, logging in protected areas and wood extraction in excess of agreed limits persist in many regions of the world.

“How fast are we turning nature into garbage? That’s what we’re saying when we measure our environmental footprint,” said Lasse Gustavsson, secretary general for the World Wildlife Fund, Sweden, at a recent press conference on sustainable forestry in Orebro. “Biodiversity is declining at a similar rate to which humans’ footprint is growing.”

A packaged solution?

Given these problems, it seems unlikely that a packaging and food-processing Goliath like Swedish company Tetra Pak could form part of the solution. Using plastic and aluminium-coated paperboard to package sterilised liquid contents such as pasteurised milk, soups and even wine, Tetra Pak packages can be found in just about every corner of the planet.

Last year alone, Tetra Pak produced 137 billion drinks cartons (4,344 packages each second), which amounts to roughly 92.5 million treetops destined to be ground into paper and pulp.

Yet, not only is the paperboard from which Tetra Pak cartons are constructed sourced, for the most part, from sustainable forests, Tetra Pak cartons may soon rival other mainstream forms of packaging in terms of recyclability, due to the firm’s waste collection initiatives and recycling facilities that are able to separate the aluminum and plastic from the paperboard cartons.

The Tetra Pak-WWF connection

Tetra Pak has been firmly on board with the WWF since 2005, when it signed up to WWF’s Climate Saver’s Programme. The company pledged to reduce its emissions by 10% by 2010.

Despite allegations of greenwashing the previous year – which saw Tetra Pak UK thrown off the WWF’s 95+ Group over a “misleading” ad that claimed that “because the trees we use are replaced by even more trees, when you choose cartons you’re helping to grow more forests” – Tetra Pak has demonstrated commitment to forest stewardship, with a strong focus on the certification of its products.

Currently, 80 percent of the wood fibers used to make Tetra Pak cartons are chain of custody certified and are verified by the independent auditing body, ProForest. This means Tetra Pak can verify that the paperboard it uses can be traced back to suppliers who meet minimum forestry management standards and who are considered “acceptable” according to definitions by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the WWF Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN).

“It has taken us about 15 years to get to this stage of traceability,” said Erika Mink, Tetra Pak’s environmental director for Europe. “We aim to have all of our paperboard 100% chain of custody certified by 2015,” she added.

Of Tetra Pak’s timber sources, 25% are actually certified by the FSC, the only sustainable forestry certification recognised by the WWF. To obtain FSC certification, a forest must protect biodiversity and indigenous livelihoods, adhere to local and international laws and practise forest renewal to ISO standards.

Setting the bar higher

On this last front, the WWF says companies like Tetra Pak could be doing a lot more. “Tetra Pak needs to be more aggressive,” said Gustavsson. “They could be a real driver of change by saying they will only source from FSC certified forests.”

At present, only 7% of the world’s forests are FSC certified, a strong indicator that the illegal timber trade continues to thrive. A report last year by the UK’s Department for International Development states that more than 70% of the timber from Cambodia, Indonesia, Bolivia and Brazil is illegal.

A separate report this month by the WWF revealed that EU imports of wood and paper products from the China almost tripled between 2003 and 2006, from 4 million to 11.5 million cubic metres. As one of the biggest importers of timber from high-risk regions, such as the far east of Russia, South-east Asia and Africa, wood products from China have a high probability of illegal origin, says the report.

The current dearth of regulation on illegal timber imports means that schemes like the FSC and the GFTN provide the only active check against the rising tide of illegal logging. “Currently there are no legal restrictions on illegal timber imports to the EU”, says Saskia Ozinga, a campaigner at the NGO Forests and the European Union Resource Network (FERN). “Unless it was on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species list, even if customs officers knew the timber was illegally sourced, there would be nothing they could do about it.”

With an 80 percent share of the carton packaging market, Tetra Pak exercises considerable influence over its paperboard suppliers. If the company opted to only purchase FSC certified products, its suppliers would have no choice but to comply, says Gustavsson.

But as Bengt Brunberg, spokesperson for Korsnäs, an FSC-certified Swedish paperboard supplier points out, often there are hundreds of small suppliers providing timber to the large paper mills. “The private, smaller suppliers find the FSC demands too rigorous,” he says.

“The average Swedish supplier only owns roughly 25 hectares – the annual harvest of which is very small,” explains Lena Dahl, Tetra Pak’s forestry officer. She says that not only is the cost of FSC certification for these small suppliers often prohibitive, but the large number of suppliers makes it very difficult to trace all of the wood.

In response, pulp and board mills like Korsnäs are promoting group certification schemes, in which it assists its suppliers to get certified by schemes such as the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), an alternative to the FSC certification.

The problem here, however, is that the PEFC standard has lost credibility in the eyes of NGOs, including Greenpeace, who deplore the “rubber stamp” approach taken by the PEFC that has led to the degradation of forests such as those in Finland.

That is not to say that Tetra Pak is not engaging with the issue of illegal logging. In 2006, the firm signed a three-year agreement with WWF to provide funding to the GFTN and to cooperate in programs like the High Conservation Value Forest (HCVF) Resource Network, designed to disseminate best practice on forest management. The HCVF concept aims to equip organisations to identify and manage forests deemed to be of critical importance on the grounds of environmental, socio-economic, cultural, biodiversity and landscape value.

By partnering with companies like Tetra Pak, the WWF is gaining traction on its initiatives like the HVFC and the GFTN. It is through these types of projects that the WWF aims to meet its goal of diminishing the human footprint to a sustainable size by 2050. Gustavsson believes this can be achieved “by shifting the 500 companies that produce 80 percent of consumer choice toward sustainable practices”.

Enough to go around?

However, industrialising countries, such as India and China, whose burgeoning populations and consumer demands have created a massive need for raw materials, are placing increasing pressure on natural resources, including forests.

Following its decision to halt logging on environmental grounds, China has become the world’s second-largest importer of wood and paper products. Russia, Indonesia and Canada furnish over 60% of this demand, according to the Center for International Forestry Research.

For paperboard packaging manufacturers like Tetra Pak, this means big business. Today, China is Tetra Pak’s largest growth market. With 27 billion Tetra Pak packages landing on its shores last year alone, China is now Tetra Pak’s largest market in terms of number of packages.

Is such demand sustainable, even with managed forests? According to Gustavsson, the answer is yes. “In theory, there is enough [forest] for our needs – if we manage it cleverly. In other words, so long as we use wood fibers as many times as they can be recycled. We need to see more innovation in terms of recycling and reuse of forest products.”

Closing the loop

Again, Tetra Pak has seized the opportunity to become part of the solution. Tetra Pak China has been working with paper mills there to foster carton recycling. The company has also worked with education authorities in Beijing and Shanghai to promote community-level carton collection schemes.

This model of engagement with local authorities and communities to establish collection and recycling schemes has also been rolled out in parts of Europe, the US and the Middle East. In the UK, Tetra Pak has provided funding to local authorities and has partnered with local contractors to provide collection and maintenance services across the country.

Tetra Pak cartons may also be poised become a mainstream recycling material. A joint venture between Brazil-based Alcoa Alumnio and Tetra Pak in 2005 saw the world’s first carton recycling facility to achieve total separation of the polymer and aluminum components from the carton. Until then, the recycling process separated the carton, but kept the plastic and aluminum together. The new process enables all three components to be reused as raw materials.

The cartons, which are typically comprised of 74% paper fibres, can be recycled into new paper products, such as kitchen rolls, corrugated cardboard boxes and paper bags. A gasification plant in Finland currently recovers the aluminum from Tetra Pak cartons as a powder, which has industrial applications. Several cement plants in Germany also use the left over aluminum oxidises from Tetra Pak cartons, blending them with raw materials to produce cement.

However, carton recycling is far from achieving its potential. Last year only 30% of cartons were recycled in Europe, while only 16% of Tetra Pak cartons were recycled globally.

In the meantime, 60 acres of forest are felled every minute, according to latest data from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation. If WWF is to achieve its 2050 goal, then the pace will need to pick up. As Gustavsson puts it: “If we don’t start producing and consuming in sustainable terms, we’re all fried – in the not too distant future.”