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Packaging waste accounts for around 40% of plastic waste around the world. Tens of millions of it go straight to landfills and their recyclability is simply ignored. Sustainable packaging expert Elizabeth Corbett is here to discuss what must be done to reduce our seemingly endless packaging waste. Joining Corinna Bellizzi, she presents innovative and greener solutions that could solve this alarming problem, from reusable containers to accessible refill systems. Elizabeth also discusses how consumers can contribute to boost the use of eco-friendly packaging and what must be changed in the federal government to finally solve the United States’ broken garbage system.

About Elizabeth Corbett

Elizabeth is leading a revolution in sustainable packaging, helping brands across cannabis, health & beauty, and consumer goods industries make their packaging smarter and greener.

Over her 25+ year career, Elizabeth has built and led $100M+ sales teams, developed growth strategies, and designed packaging solutions for iconic brands like Estée Lauder, Starbucks’ Teavana, Privateer/Tilray, and Martha Stewart CBD, combining elegance with eco responsibility.

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ecorbett/

Guest Website: https://aeglobal.com/

Show Notes: Raw audio

• The Alarming Statistics Of Packaging Waste – 02:05
• Innovative Ways In Getting Rid Of Plastic Packaging – 06:08
• Benefits Of Using Reusable Containers – 14:27
• Rise Of Sustainability In Brand And Business Building – 20:23
• Building Brands While Prioritizing Recyclability – 32:41
• Insights On Novel Packaging Materials – 38:06
• How The Federal Government Blocks Plastic Recycling – 40:27
• Building A 100% Sustainable Organization – 43:31
• Appreciating Durability And Prioritizing Reuse Of Goods – 46:10
• Closing Words And Episode Wrap-up – 48:42

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Reducing Our Packaging Waste With Elizabeth Corbett

Each week, I invite you to care more about a specific social or environmental issue so that we can create a better world together. This week is no exception, as we’re going to dive into the world of garbage, and just not any garbage but the garbage that makes its way into your home as packaging and out the door as downcycled materials, recycled materials, and trash.

For this discussion, I am joined by Elizabeth Corbett, a sustainable packaging expert who supports brands across cannabis, health, beauty, and the consumer industries as a whole. Her aim is to help make our packaging solutions smarter and greener. With that, let me welcome her to the stage. Elizabeth Corbett, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

The Alarming Statistics Of Packaging Waste

I feel like we are birds of a feather here, each working to tackle this from our own arenas. I seek to limit plastic in the brands that I work with, the key example being Orlo Nutrition. I wanted to go ahead and start off our discussion with a few statistics. I hope you don’t mind me reading those out. Forty percent of global plastic waste comes from packaging. That’s a huge number.

One hundred forty-one million tons of plastic packaging are produced each year. We’re talking tens of millions of tons of plastic packaging. The US, Europe, and China together account for 60% of the world’s entire packaging waste, and the US EPA estimates that 30% of our solid waste, not recycling, is plastic. The EU, however, does a better job. They recycle an estimated 84.2% of their packaging waste. What do you make of all this? How can we do better?

One of the things that you said is one of the things that I’m most passionate about, and I’ll be honest, I don’t have an answer, is the fact that you said that the EU does a way better job of it. You touched on a lot of difficult areas, but one of the things that I find challenging in the United States is our whole garbage system is broken. When you look at the fact that if you live in a municipality like Seattle or Portland, you can recycle or compost almost anything. If you live in Miami, to give you an example, instead of dealing with recycling and composting, they are trying to figure out what to do because they’re running out of landfill space. It’s a different mindset.

I live part-time in South Florida and part-time in Seattle. One of the things that was very difficult for me when I first started living here was I’m used to composting everything. It pains me to put carrot peels or anything in the garbage or anything bad food. I’m working on it, but if there was a way that I could help municipalities in other parts of the United States deal with overall recycling and composting, that would be a big differentiator. We can all make changes individually, but to address this, it has to be done on a larger scale.

It needs to be done at a systems level. I agree. I’m in Santa Cruz County, and I advocated locally for our municipality to start composting services. They didn’t for a long time. Two winters ago, they added a solution where we can add our compost material to our green waste bin, which is a huge convenience factor. Up until that point, I did home composting. Some people don’t have the stamina because it does take work to maintain a good compost pile. You also have to have land, not a lot of it. You could have a little bit of land and be able to do it.

You could even have your under-sink compost canister that you use, but those don’t create soil. It’s more of a temporary solution. I’ve known people who subscribe to services where they freeze their compost and ship it away. There are all sorts of different services that you can use if you’re motivated. It’s not convenient enough to get mass adoption.

You said it. It has got to be mass adoption. You’re right. Sometimes somebody might have some space, you have to have space. There are a lot of people in condos and apartments, or maybe they’re older. I love the fact that my parents are 80 and 82, and they now live outside of Portland. It’s easy. They compost and they put everything in the right recycling bin. My dad has figured out the place where you can take styrofoam if they get styrofoam. There’s a place where you can take that. Seattle is the same way. It is possible to be trained to do so if you offer people the path to do it.

Being sustainable can be trained if people are offered the path to do it.

Innovative Ways In Getting Rid Of Plastic Packaging

That’s exactly right. The cities that have it best are probably San Francisco and New York City at this point, where they automatically include some solutions in their waste stream collection, whether or not it ends up in a specific and separate bin. Some of those waste facilities separate them at the waste facility themselves. I’ve seen that when that is the case, they don’t end up recycling quite as much as when you have self-sorted solutions. One of the things that they do in the EU, and if you haven’t traveled in Germany or some of these Western European countries, you may not have seen this, is they recollect.

They encourage people, like when you’re done with your soda water bottle, that beautiful thick glass bottle, you take it back to the store for its redemption. Everyone is in the habit of doing this. People have crates that they put their used bottles in, even their wine bottles, all of the glass bottles that they produce. They take them back, and mostly they’re reused. It would be helpful to get us to a place where we are building some of these circular systems, but we’re not there yet.

We’ve seen some interesting tests and trials by brands. I saw Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and some Chex cereal doing repackaged, and you would send it in, and they send the tin back, and they would send it back with more ice cream or something to that effect. I don’t even know if those things are even out there anymore, but I remember them coming up about 4 or 5 years ago. What innovations are you seeing presently that could be a little bit more in that way, that circular fashion?

This is so old school, but the states that do have a bottle bill have an amazing amount of recycling. Whether that be Michigan or Oregon. In Oregon, it was $0.05 and I think it’s $0.10 now.

The redemption value.

That works. It works. It drives behavior. I know it sounds old school, but sometimes old school works. Some interesting things are going on right now. There’s so much experimentation going on in packaging in terms of reusing plastic and using the right plastic. I don’t know if you’ve seen the new Vital Proteins canisters. I don’t know if you’ve seen them or not.

Vital Proteins, for people’s context, is a bovine protein. It’s the collagen. They market it to be added to any liquid. You can even put it in your coffee if you want to. I don’t use it, but more people do. Essentially, it will dissolve in any liquid fairly rapidly. They sold them in these plastic canisters that are very typical of the protein space. They’re now doing a paper carton, which is available in Costco. I’m curious to see if they stick with it or if it ends up going back out because we’ve seen some brands come forward with innovative packaging and then phase it out again. That’s new, and we’ll see if it lasts.

We’ll see if it’s lasting. I’m currently talking to a company where they have figured out how to do aluminum pill bottles versus plastic that are CR, and aluminum can be recycled forever. They have done their first experiment because when you go to Costco, you go into the pharmacy part, and there are all those huge plastic bottles of different supplements. The majority of them, I don’t believe, are probably even recycled.

The recyclable HPDE. They’re mostly white HPDE standard bottles, the Boston rounds. The only one in there I see that is aluminum so far is the Utheory Omega-3, which they came forward with at Expo West. Those bottles are available on the market, but the minimum for them is quite high. A lot of manufacturers won’t even consider shifting to them yet. The minimum order quantities are something like 30,000 units. If you think about a smaller brand, you’re not going to be able to have access to something like that out of the gate because of the minimum order quantity.

I’m speaking to somebody who’s working on something where that would address that. New things are coming on from that perspective. There’s a lot of experimentation in compostable technology. I’m personally not a fan of what’s out there for a lot of different reasons. We already brought up the first reason. The majority of compostable packaging that you see needs industrial composting, which most people don’t have access to. The other thing that is true for a lot of products is that it doesn’t protect products very well.

If you have potato chips, if you have something that’s in a humid climate, I know somebody who moved all of their potato chip packaging produced in Canada into compostable and ended up taking almost all of it back way before its expiration date. It’s heartbreaking. It’s financially horrible. It’s terrible from a waste perspective and then had to move it all back in. I’ve worked with that person. I was not the one who sold them the compostable, but I worked with them to move to a bag that is 40% post-consumer.

It’s not perfect. You talked about people going back and forth. I’ll use crackers as a good example. I’ve seen a lot of crackers go from a bag in a box. They were in a pouch, going back to a bag in a box. It’s still a bag. There’s still a bag in a box. I don’t know what’s driving that. I don’t know if that’s because, from a perception perspective, they think that makes it look like it’s more sustainable. In my own opinion, you’ve moved from two items to one, back to two, and they’re still plastic.

I was even thinking about how we used to be able to get Ritz crackers in this wonderful packaging that was made of wax paper. Do you remember those days? It’s been plastic for a long time. They made the plastic look the same color. It almost looks like the waxed paper of yesteryear. There’s no reason that they couldn’t go back to that.

It protects the product, especially because Ritz crackers are pretty oily. They needed it.

It was the perfect packaging, but it was cheaper to go to plastic. That’s what they did. This is the driver for so many companies. It ends up being a price issue. It’s quite possible that these multilayer bags, which they were starting to look at from a production standpoint, the multilayer bags and the chip bags that you see on the market, are not recyclable.

Multilayer bags are not recyclable, and some of those inner bags are still technically recyclable because it’s not necessarily multilayer bags. They may be making the pitch from that eco perspective of, “The paper carton is recyclable, and then the clear-ish plastic bag on the inside could be more recyclable or not as toxic to the environment.” I don’t know. I think it’s probably a brand billboard perspective or a quality perspective that they’re leaning into, or cost, or all three.

I feel like we’re being so depressing. I’m not depressed, I promise.

Benefits Of Using Reusable Containers

There are better ways to do it. I know I’ve talked about Orlo before on this particular show because I’m involved in this project. I worked to help develop this brand. One of the things that we leaned into was the potential to use a reusable bottle. That’s what I was talking about a little bit earlier with what Ben & Jerry’s was doing a test with some other cereal brands like Chex and all these other things, where you could get the reusable canister and send it back to get more product. I don’t think that caught on because it’s going to be the few people who grab onto something like that.

What we tried to do at Orlo was utilize something that was a beautiful glass bottle. This is a thick glass, Miron Violetglass. One of the attributes of Miron Violetglass, the reason I like it, is it blocks out visible light. It means that you aren’t going to get degradation of the oil within. We printed on the glass itself. It’s not excessive plastic. It’s printed right on. This is hyper-durable. I dropped it in my bathroom on the tile, and it did not break. The lid is the only thing made of plastic. That said, we couldn’t go to a compostable solution. I tried. I tried looking at other available options. We ended up working with a reflective pouch.

This is a multilayer pouch. It’s not recyclable in 99% of recyclers. What you have to do is subscribe to one of those recycle boxes if you want to. Hopefully, they’d be able to move this into a second life. This material is over 60% post-consumer recycled. We’re trying to build in a layer of something like that. Light is an issue with supplements. This blocks out all visible light, and it’s a resealable pouch. You could reuse it. If you didn’t get the starter glass bottle, you could use this forever, and it’d be fine too.

There are ways to attack this, but this is still plastic. It’s still not perfect. I would love to see something that could go to a fiber carton, but try doing that in a soft gel. Try doing that in a gummy, for example, because these things do absorb moisture from the outside. You have to have something that’s going to be a watertight seal. That’s challenging to do in the paper world. That’s the biggest.

It is. What you’re showing, we’ve done that with some other nutraceutical and supplement companies. You’ve designed a beautiful jar that also, on the packaging side, is something that you would love to see on your counter or your bed stand. That’s something that we’ve done for a number of clients. It’s gaining legs to do that. Plus, when you even look at the shipping charges for the shipping, it takes less product to protect it. You’re lowering your cost for shipping, and all of those things.

We do a ton of work in the health and beauty space, especially in hair care. That’s another area where we are being challenged as an industry to come up with refillable solutions. To be honest, the solution for refilling is also in a flexible package because that is the majority of what it is. We are also seeing in that space a lot more aluminum tubes, a lot more stuff done with ocean-bound plastic. You have a lot of options from that perspective to at least use a high amount of recycled content or ocean-bound plastic in whatever your primary container is, or maybe it’s aluminum.

There are a lot of things that are being done in that space. It still has to look beautiful because it’s health and beauty. Particularly, the brands we work with are premium brands. It has to look nice. That whole industry is very in tune with trying to have the whole concept of refillability. Whenever you’re building a new brand now, that’s part of the conversation. How do we build that as part of our overall brand?

We are seeing, for instance, refill stations for Dr. Bronner’s soaps at Whole Foods Markets now, which I think is novel. Also, they used to do that with the old pumps back in the day, like the early health food stores. They now have something that’s more hyper-modern, and they’re starting to use that at certain Whole Foods. I think they’ve got it at three different locations presently as a trial. That’s great and helpful, but it’s not for every premium product out there either.

I do like aluminum. I know you mentioned aluminum. We also use aluminum in our Immunity Boost. The thing that people forget about aluminum is it also has a coating of plastic along the inside. It’s a very thin coating. It’s not like it’s plastic-free. Usually, they have a plastic cap. Whether or not it’s metal on the exterior, it has to have the plastic stuff inside to make it all seal well and everything else.

Rise Of Sustainability In Brand And Business Building

Getting 100% away from plastics is likely not going to happen in most packaging solutions with liquids. There’s something that’s going to have another element to it. Even when you look at Miron Violetglass, beautiful glass jars, they do some that are pressure seals like perfume bottle styles that are 100% glass. That’s not going to work for most products either. What are you seeing that’s new?

In any conversation that you have with a company, whether it’s more midsize to large, because small ones have a hard time, you already brought it up. It’s harder when you don’t have as much funding and scale. Any time that I sit down with a midsize to even larger company, the good news that I’ve seen as a huge evolution in the last five years is that sustainability is at the beginning of the conversation when you’re doing a product, when you’re doing a rebrand, or when you’re doing a new brand. I work with Culligan, one of the largest water filtration companies in the world. We have a whole brand-new line that is in production that’s going to be launched this 2025.

In the very first meeting, which was last January, there were two people from their ESG team in the room. Five years ago, that would not have happened. The way that I would describe that is it’s table stakes. Whenever we’re meeting with a customer for the first time or on a new brand, our first question is always, what’s your sustainability directive? What are your commitments? The good news is nine times out of ten, they’ve already got a standard. They’ve already got that as part of their tenets. That’s new. Five years ago, it wasn’t that way.

The one thing that’s not new, and you already brought it up, is it can’t be a lot more expensive. It can be 5% more expensive, maybe 10%. It can’t be more than that. If it’s a large-volume brand, it can’t be 10%. It has to be more reasonable, and I understand that. You have customers who will buy a brand that they see as sustainable. If they can show that it’s a tiny percent more, that’s great. They’re not going to spend a lot more money on something because the packaging is more sustainable. They won’t. I get it. It’s dumb. Everybody talks about it. I went grocery shopping on Sunday, and eighteen eggs in South Florida is $11. When you are faced with that as a consumer, you start making choices.

I have the same experience. I think we all do. A standard dozen eggs, the typical dozen eggs, was $8 in my neck of the woods. This is because of the avian flu, but this is now happening a couple of times a year. We get this shortage, and then everybody’s paying close to a buck an egg, which is not something they’re used to. At a certain point, they start changing their spending habits. They’ll do without a product.

They’ll do without the product. They’ll do without something else. You start looking at something, and you look at the packaging. There are some things I won’t do. I hadn’t seen eggs in styrofoam in twenty years until I was in South Florida. I can’t buy eggs in styrofoam. I won’t. I don’t care if they’re more. I have a line. If there are other ways that you can help a customer, one of the biggest things that we do, and I did this with a couple of customers last year who wanted to be more sustainable, was helping them find a way to make their packaging smaller. That’s the number one thing that you can do. I tell this to everybody. If you want to be more sustainable, let’s see if we can make your packaging smaller.

Even just 10% smaller. It doesn’t have to be that much smaller.

It doesn’t have to be that much smaller. It can help you, like if you’re worried about the cost and you want to move to a recycled pouch, or if you want to move to a carton that is 100% post-consumer, or even 50% or whatever, and you’re worried about the cost, but if I could make it 10% smaller, then I can get you the budget to help make that decision. That’s one of the things that I try to do for our customers. You’re showing me. Did you do that already?

Yeah, 10% smaller even on that one.

That’s awesome.

You don’t even think about it. It’s about a half-inch shorter, but it holds the same amount. It’s that we said goodbye to a little bit extra of what was on the top and moved the zipper down a tiny bit. That alone saves the rim of this. Even if it is a quarter-inch of plastic sheeting, a quarter-inch times the 30,000 that we’re going to make of that pouch is significant. Use less, just a little bit.

The other thing that I do when I’m working with a customer is, where is your product made? We produce lots of different products, and I have a new client that I’m working with. We’re going to be doing all their labels. They have 60 SKUs. Their co-manufacturing plant, where they’re making everything, is in Indiana. That happens to be where my label plant is where I’m going to be making this. It’s right down the road.

One of my first questions is, where are you making this product? Where is it being packed out? I want to try to make whatever is possible as close to that location as possible. When we’re deciding where to build or buy a new plant, part of our consideration is, what is that? In Chicago, we have a pretty significant pouch manufacturing plant. That is an awesome place to have packaging because there’s so much in that general area.

I have so many customers for whom we’re very close from a ship-to perspective. Shipping continues to be one of the largest violators of our ecosystem. There are certain things that I understand have to be made in China. I get it because there are certain things I have to do there that I don’t have another choice. I have a hard time when somebody is like, “Is it cheaper for me to make this in China?”

Shipping continues to be one of the largest violators of our ecosystem.

I’ll use a pouch as a good example because somebody asked me about this. I said, “You have a tight timeline. Let me look at your airfare. Do you want this air-freighted? That’s going to cost you $0.19 a pouch to air-freight that. You didn’t think about that. What does that do from a sustainability perspective? You told me you wanted a pouch that was 40% post-consumer. If I’m flying it from China to Boston, I think your sustainability statement is gone.”

That’s how they’re accounting for it too, like which scope of emissions are they accounting for it at? This is such a complicated story. As we now face the challenges posed by a new political regimen, we know that there are likely to be tariffs imposed that will support more movement of manufacturing within the United States. That’s part of the silver lining.

Like you, I have also worked to have the pouches created here in the United States and to try to keep the transit distance minimized. Sometimes, you get some limitations in place from that, but we’re encapsulating in Southern California, as an example, and then shipping it across town to a packaging company to be packaged and then sent via ground to Texas. That’s where our fulfillment partners are.

The reason we’re working through Texas is because we can ship pretty much anywhere in the country within four or five business days from there via ground without having to air-freight it. It ends up being one central location. Would it be ideal to have multiple locations? Sure, but we’re not at a brand size yet where we can manage that much inventory delicately between distribution sites. We’ll get there, but for now, this is working great. Trying to find the right solution for a company to help them manage those logistics and get to the point where they are producing the most responsible product they can. Nothing comes without a carbon cost. That’s the reality.

When I was in my PhD program at Prescott College in sustainability, I learned that a single sheet of paper costs 2 gallons of water to create. You don’t necessarily think about that, like a single sheet of paper. What does the carton cost, not only from a carbon perspective but also from a water perspective? Freshwater is something that we need to protect and preserve now. We think about all of these things as they relate to the sustainability of a given packaging item.

The answer, at the end of the day, seems to be if we can do with less, then do with less. Less packaging, less outer packaging. That might mean less of a brand billboard. How do you communicate about the brand? All of these questions start to come to the forefront. I wondered if you have helped brands tackle that piece, let’s say reducing from an outer box to only the thing that was inside and still tackling that other perspective of the billboard of the brand and the communication strategy.

The majority of the nutraceutical and supplement companies that we work with now, if we’re able to participate with them at the beginning of their brand or rebrand, much like yours, a number of them had built into their system that they were going to have a secondary carton. In almost every case, I’ve been able to encourage them not to do so.

Theoretically, I should want them to because I’ll make money, but it’s not the right thing to do. If you do a good enough job on your primary container, you don’t need a secondary box. Sometimes, I’m trying to think of certain health and beauty brands where you still see more of that secondary carton. I would say that in the nutraceutical and supplement world, that whole secondary carton is going away. The unfortunate thing is when I do end up seeing it, it’s because whatever the product is needs so much information given that’s required by law.

When you have a good enough jar in your primary container, you will never need a secondary box.

My company, AE Global, is one of the largest producers of custom packaging for the cannabis industry. There are many times that we have to do a secondary carton that is only needed because whatever state government has decided that so much information is required, you don’t have a choice. Sometimes, those state governments require a secondary carton. That’s one of the hardest parts about that particular industry. There’s a lot of waste in packaging that’s completely driven by individuals who are making decisions up in some castle without considering what they’re doing and how they’re impacting the overall environment.

They frankly may not care about it.

That may be true too, but we do. Anytime I’m working on something with somebody, we’re always trying to figure it out. Part of it is also the budget. What can I get you that’s amazing that’s going to fit this budget?

Building Brands While Prioritizing Recyclability

I’d love for you to talk about how you’re tackling things from that recyclability perspective. Are the solutions that you’re using typically recycled and recyclable in most municipalities, or are you also working with some things that are a little bit more challenging in that space?

Any time that we’re working with a customer, we try to make sure that we’re specifying something that’s recycled and recyclable. I’ll use Culligan as a good example. The very first group of brands that I got to work with them on had us send all of their existing packaging. They had ten items, and these were like 200 items. I went through all of them, all 200, and broke down everything that I could see that would address sustainability. In almost every case, we also have the bonus of cost savings.

When we went through them, we found ten items that were using a plastic clamshell. That was one of the first things that I was like, “We need to get rid of that. We can build you an insert that’s going to protect the product that’s corrugated. We don’t need to use the plastic clamshell.” In that case, that was a little bit more money, but what we were able to do was show them how to save enough money in the whole 200 SKUs that are more than made up for those ten clamshells.

There were also at least maybe 40 items where we figured out that we could make the box smaller. By the box smaller, I’m talking sometimes by like this much, a lot. I joked there were a couple of times I could pick up the box, and I was shaking it because it’s heavy stuff. I was like, “I can fix this.” It could have been shorter, bringing in the overall dimensions. We already talked about this, but the very first thing that we address is how we right-size this. If there’s single-use plastic in there that’s not recyclable, how do we get rid of that?

That’s the very first thing. When we’re working on custom inserts, we automatically go to paper. Whether that’s corrugated, whether that’s paper foam, whether that’s molded fiber, oftentimes we do not have the option to do molded fiber or paper foam because it’s expensive and the minimums are too high. We did a great project for a new high-end filter, and we made the entire insert out of corrugate. It’s great. It’s a great customer experience, and it completely protects the product.

One hundred percent sustainable. In that case, you have the option to go with high recycled content on the corrugate itself. I’m a big fan of FSC, which stands for Forest Stewardship Council, which means that even if it’s virgin or recycled, there’s a full chain of custody, which is important. A lot of that came from the need to track where fiber was coming from. You had people who were cutting down the boreal forests in Edmonton. You had people cutting down the old-growth forest in Indonesia.

There was a reason for needing to understand that whole chain of custody. I’m a big fan of FSC. It adds a couple of pennies. It’s one of those things that’s worth it. If it needs to be plastic, can we recycle it? There are a number of states, like in the cannabis side in New York now, where it’s required to be at least 25% post-consumer, which is great. I think you’re going to see that kind of rule in a lot of other states now. Honestly, it’s easy.

Going to a 25% post-consumer isn’t that hard. It doesn’t even add a lot of costs. If it’s flexible, we recommend, as you said, I can do anywhere from 25% to 60% post-consumer on flexible. It’s not that much more expensive. It’s where we lead. If there’s the option to utilize ocean-bound plastic, we have our own ocean-bound plastic facility in the Dominican Republic, which gathers and processes what would have been ocean-bound plastic to be sent back to the U.S. to be either used in new packaging for us or for other people.

One of my favorite stories is that Windex bottles are all going to be made out of ocean-bound plastic. That’s perfect. That’s the kind of product that should be in ocean-bound plastic. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. There are so many things that we talked about. We talked about this, but where’s your product going to be made? I want to try to make whatever I’m making for you as close to there as possible.

Insights On Novel Packaging Materials

What about some of the more novel materials? You mentioned you’re in the hemp industry, the cannabis industry. What about using hemp fibers or mushroom-like packaging? I’ve seen even some of that framework that would protect a glass bottle inside of something molded or whatnot.

It’s critical mass. It’s not here yet. We’ve come across some amazing mushroom fiber products that are out of Australia. That’s very cool. Huge future. I wish we made them here. In the case of hemp, hemp paper is very expensive, like three times the cost. It’s cool and it’s great. I’ve shown it to people, but in terms of scale, they can’t afford it. I understand that.

There needs to be more. Once something has gone to a critical scale, then absolutely because hemp paper is awesome. It’s strong. The print’s fine. The number one source of hemp paper is coming out of Spain. It’d be great if it was made here. There are a lot of people trying. It will come, just like compostable. It’s a matter of getting to critical mass to the point where it’s affordable.

We see movement too even in the ink space. For instance, with Orlo, we’re working with black ink that’s from algae. It’s algae-based ink, as opposed to petrochemical-based ink. I’ve interviewed Scott Fulbright, the co-founder of Living Ink Technologies, on this show. I’ve been following his work for some time. He’s working with some major brands. In particular, he’s working with Patagonia, has done a project with Adidas, and is doing some stuff in the fashion industry, where they’re even using their algae-based inks as would-be t-shirt silk screening material, as well as even fabric dyes, which is interesting. It’s using another material that is a co-product of the production of stuff for nutrition. It comes from spirulina cultivation. You make something for humans to consume, and then they’re able to take the waste stream from that and turn it into ink, which is incredible.

How The Federal Government Blocks Plastic Recycling

I think one of the things, this goes back to the federal thing, is that I didn’t realize until I started working with Culligan that the federal government limits the ability to use post-consumer plastic in a lot of items. It doesn’t make any sense, to be honest.

If it touches a product, it’s supposed to be a virgin. This is why, for instance, a bottle. If you get this plastic bottle, a simple Boston round plastic bottle. Only a certain percentage of it can be post-consumer recycled because the part that touches the gummies has to be virgin plastic.

Correct, but it’s even worse. For example, a Brita pitcher or the Culligan ZeroWater pitchers are not allowed to have any post-consumer content. Honestly, it doesn’t make any sense. I could go on a whole thing about all the different things that the government needs to address, but that’s one of the areas where there needs to be more testing and somebody in the government willing to go, “I could see how that would make sense.”

It is because there are all kinds of things. You could be using post-consumer plastic. You could be using ocean-bound plastic for a number of things that aren’t allowed. I would tell you from a future perspective, we all know that there is plenty of plastic out there to be utilized and turned into new things. Part of the challenge is being able to work through regulations to be able to use it for all the things that it could be used for.

It is because it ends up downcycled. There are even technologies now on the recycling side where they’re trying to figure out how to make recycled plastic like virgin plastic in all of its properties. They’re able to do that on a small scale. It hasn’t yet gone out to full manufacturing capacity, but it’s more at a university project level at this point. The technology is there, but the scale isn’t there yet.

You would still have to get the US government to approve it.

Building A 100% Sustainable Organization

Exactly. For regulation purposes, there’s a reason that everything gets downcycled. That milk carton made of plastic doesn’t get recycled as another milk carton or another supplement bottle or anything like that. It ends up downcycled. Even the plastic bottle that you’re consuming your supplements from might end up being a park bench or something to that effect, or Trex decking, something like that, the recycled component of it. It’s unfortunate, but it’s our present reality. I wondered if there was a particular project that you could showcase as something that you’re very proud of that you can speak about publicly.

The Culligan one I’m pretty proud of because we were able to go through and, from start to finish, have an organization that was 100% committed to being as sustainable as possible.

We’re speaking about Vital Proteins now, right?

No, Culligan.

I was thinking collagen. Pardon me.

That’s okay. It’s been refreshing to be working with an organization at ESG, but everybody realized in their company that was table stakes. The other thing working with them has been they currently have a program where we’re all working to try to figure out how to make it even better, but they have a program where you can send in your used filters, like the K-Cups.

I don’t do a K-Cup, but it’s a similar type of thing where you can send in their filters, and then they’re sent and broken apart to take out the parts that they can recycle, which are quite a few items. When you do send that, you get a coupon. You get a coupon that you can go back and use. That’s your incentive, besides being a good human to do that.

I used to do that with my printer cartridges, and then the company stopped supporting that. It is because printer ink is very wasteful too. Those cartridges are intense. They’ve got the wheels in them and everything. Why do they have to be wasted each time? We need to encourage more of that. The ability to reuse or recycle these items is important.

Find a way so that your partners can be cost-neutral or even find a way to have it be profitable. In Seattle, they have Ridwell. I don’t know if they have that where you guys are. Ridwell looks like the milkman box on your front porch. That’s where you put all the stuff that you can’t put in the recycle. It’s not everything, but they give you a big list of all the things that you can put in there that you couldn’t put in your recycling bin. They’ve made that a business. They’ve figured out how to make money doing that. The unfortunate part of our world is you have to find ways to have whatever program you have to at least be cost-neutral or at least find some profit.

An unfortunate part of the world is that you have to find ways to be cost-neutral or at least find some profit if you want to be sustainable.

Appreciating Durability And Prioritizing Reuse Of Goods

I interviewed June Jo Lee on this show. She’s an ethnographic food specialist. She’s a food ethnographer. She spoke at Expo West 2024 as one of the keynote speakers.

I saw her. That’s how I know that name.

I had her on the show. She’s local to me. I’ve developed a friendship with her. I’ve spent time with her a couple of times in person up in San Francisco near her home. At Google, on a project here, I helped her work an event so that I could see what it was like to create this experience that connected to food for a bunch of the Googlers or Googleites. I don’t remember what you call them.

It was such a pleasant experience to spend that time with her. She shared with me a story. She’s working with a dairy brand. She visited one of these local stores that they refer to as the local Walmart. They call it the Amish Walmart. It’s not a Walmart. It’s not related to a Walmart at all. They have all these individually used pieces of farm equipment that have been repurposed or that could be reused for something else, even down to ax handles and things like that.

It’s interesting to see that in some of these communities where the Amish and Mennonites are present. They’ve figured out ways to keep these kinds of systems in place. I feel like if we could learn from them a little bit about durability and using and reusing goods that have a longer life, or creating goods that have a longer life, we’ll be in a better spot overall.

I agree. I’m very anti-fast fashion. I completely agree. I love consignment. I love repurposing. I am a big fan of the ’50s. There are many things in my home here and my home in Seattle that are from the ’50s. I love it. I love repurposing things.

I knew when I was in my early twenties that I was going to buy one KitchenAid mixer that I was going to have for the rest of my life. How many people still do that?

I have a red one. What color is yours?

Mine is caviar. It’s black and sparkly.

That’s awesome.

I bought it in 1998 or 1999, maybe. I’ve had it for 25 years already.

I got mine in 1999. You’re right. You buy right and it lasts forever. My mom still has hers, and it’s white. That thing has to be probably 58 years old.

My mom’s was a very telling color of avocado green.

That’s the best. My parents had, what was that burnt orange or that burnt umber color?

Burnt sienna. I think it was on everything, from crayons to refrigerators.

It was in the same time period as the avocado.

Closing Words And Episode Wrap-up

That’s right. I have so appreciated this time. I look forward to staying connected. I feel like there are some synergies between what you’re doing and what I’m doing. I would love to offer you the floor for a moment to perhaps offer either a question that you wish I’d asked and I haven’t, and you could ask and answer it, or some closing thoughts that people could take with them as they conduct their days.

You didn’t ask me this question, but I should have included it as part of this. You asked what was new. Ten years ago, I worked on a large project with a customer, and because of who I am, I specified sustainable substrates for everything. They never asked me to do that. When they were about to launch the product, everything was made, the whole thing. We’ve been working on it for a year and a half, their marketing department called me to ask me what was sustainable about their packaging. The great thing is that doesn’t happen anymore.

At least, it doesn’t happen to me. It’s now the complete opposite, where it’s part of the early conversation. That’s what I ask everybody. That would be one of my closing notes, when you are starting to either do a rebrand, redo your packaging, or start something new, you want to launch something, keep sustainability as part of the conversation at the very beginning, and think about your packaging at the very beginning. It gives you a lot more flexibility in the long run.

Any closing thoughts? If you have a resource you want to leave people with or any closing thoughts?

The best way to find me is on LinkedIn. I’m Elizabeth Corbett, president of the Enterprise Group at AE Global here in Miami. I’m truly passionate about sustainability and creating sustainable solutions. I grew up in Oregon. It’s part of who I am to the very core. I consider it in every single project that we’re working on, and so does my company. It’s part of our culture.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much for joining me, Elizabeth. I will be sure to include links to everywhere people can find you in the show notes, as always, as well as on our blog page on our website, CareMoreBeBetter.com. I want to close with one thought as well, as I invite you to stick around for a minute, and that is this. We need to, as consumers and as individuals, demand better. What I mean by that is truly committing to vote with our dollars. If we see something that is in the wrong packaging, then maybe we choose not to buy it.

Maybe we tell that company, “I’m choosing not to buy this because I see that you’re using all of this excessive packaging. You could do better. I love your product, but I’m not going to buy it now,” or to even limit the amount of plastic that you bring into your home. Consider buying more real whole foods and less that are coming from the packaged aisles. It’s possible to spend a little bit more time in the kitchen, have your dollars stretch further, and produce a lot less waste. I know it sounds hard, but step by step, you can take these baby steps with us.

I will also encourage you, if you do not have a composting program in your municipality, to not be silent. You can demand that your local waste management company make your life a little bit easier. If enough of you raise your hand and say you want it, solutions will come. With that, Elizabeth, I want to thank you again for joining me.

Thank you very much.

Important Links

• Elizabeth Corbett on LinkedIn
• AE Global
• Orlo Nutrition
• How To Eat Better Through Ethnographic Diet With June Jo Lee
• Petrochemical-Free! This Ink Is Made From Algae! With Scott Fulbright, CEO and Co-Founder of Living Ink

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