COVER STORY Your brief is simple…a new packaging system that delivers on your company’s promises of sustainability and ‘clean green’ global awareness. When your customers flock to your products on supermarket shelves, they are being attracted by packaging that fulfils its pledge of being environmental friendly and good for the planet. 12 MARCH 2017 many different ways depending on where they are and what situation they are in – and this means that packaging has to reflect those different situations. For example, some materials degrade faster outdoors in contact with light and oxygen, while others degrade best in landfills with no light and no oxygen – your choice of packaging material is therefore determined by the most likely method of disposal.” Whyte says HealthPak is determined to keep questioning and testing environmental claims as it continues to develop products and use new materials, because it believes that New Zealand’s green credentials underpin the country’s success in business. For Professor Joseph Greene from the department of mechanical and mechatronic engineering and sustainable manufacturing at California State University, many manufacturers don’t take kindly to questions about their packaging. The author of a book on the subject, Greene says polyethylene or styrene remain hazardous Only thing is, you have just the manufacturer’s word that what you are claiming is, in fact, correct. And for some companies, creating and using sustainable packaging is not a simple process. Imagine finding out that your new packaging that you’ve spent endless time and money developing is not what its environmental claims or benefits promise to be. The world’s sustainable packaging industry is one worth US$27 billion, with an annual 4% growth rate. By 2020, it’s predicted to grow to a whopping US$57.8 billion, meaning the sector is lucrative and ripe for profit through research and development. For Toby Whyte of Auckland’s HealthPak, creating and recommending sustainable packaging is an important task…but so is sourcing materials that provide endproducts capable of being disposed of and recycled properly. Despite decadesworth of additives and products designed to make packaging natural or sustainable, Whyte reckons that even he – with nearly quarter of a century of experience in the market – questions the best options available and says that some choices “simply don’t work.” Because many ingredients, additives and products are made offshore, it is easy to simply regurgitate claims made at the source of manufacture and assume they are relevant to New Zealand conditions and practices, Whyte says. “If a product or packaging has to travel huge distances or if it is manufactured in a country with very poor environmental standards, then that can undercut any ‘sustainable’ tag it might carry. Equally, terms like compostable and recyclable rely on how those products are disposed – nothing will compost in a landfill and New Zealand isn’t capable of recycling many materials. “New Zealanders dispose of packaging in
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