Accentuating the sure in sustainable packaging

The hard lesson that ConAgra’s Gail Tavill learned in
messaging related to sustainability.

 

Lessons learned can be
profoundly helpful, but they can sometimes hit like a ton of bricks. That was
how ConAgra Foods’ Gail Tavill, VP, Sustainable Development, described a
particular lesson learned during a recent interview that also hit me the same
way.
A 20+ year packaging
professional, Tavill lives and breathes sustainability across a full spectrum
of “green” for the company including for packaging. She is also the new
president for
AMERIPEN, the American Institute for
Packaging and the Environment.

“One of the
things that we’re thinking about at AMERIPEN and that others should think about
is…how to develop better ways to communicate what companies are doing around
sustainable packaging and clear up some of those confusion points,” Tavill said.

For one thing, she has a big problem
with messaging related to the first of the original three Rs of sustainable
packaging: Reduce.

 “Every time we make a claim that says we
reduced packaging, we imply that packaging is bad because if it wasn’t, why
would you reduce it?” she asks. “It’s sort of how we’ve settled in as an
industry: We’ve accepted the fact that we need to reduce our way into
sustainability, but I fundamentally believe that’s the wrong strategy.”

That proverbial ton of bricks
was above me and on its way down.
“Looking back at some of the
claims that we have made and how we’ve made them, I probably would restate some
of them and do more to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative. You’ll
see more of that coming out of AMERIPEN member companies.

“What we need to talk about
is the value that packaging brings to our industry. I think even packaging
engineers undervalue its worth.”

Tavill distilled things
down to this: What is needed is to have packaging do the best job it can to
serve the purpose it was intended for in the first place.

 “If we do that, packaging will truly be
sustainable because it will sustain the rest of the investment and the products
and goods that we need,” she added.
To hear more from Tavill and
other voices in packaging sustainability, you can read our cover feature (Sustainability in 2012: Putting the 6Rs into
Thought and Action).
 

And for insightful voices
elsewhere, check our other articles found in our
online
digital edition.
While we may not have all the
answers to your packaging challenges, we solicit the input of packaging experts
who have some of them. And then maybe that ton of bricks will feel more like a
ton of feathers the next time.