Packaging and the environment — Les emballages et l’environnement

Canada, along with its’ provinces and territories, is passive when it comes to packaging waste as compared to the efforts undertaken in the European Union. The European Directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste aims to harmonize national measures in order to prevent or reduce the impact of packaging and packaging waste on the environment and to ensure the functioning of the Internal Market.  It contains provisions on the (1) prevention of packaging waste, on the (2) re-use of packaging and on the (3) recovery and (4) recycling of packaging waste. There are specific provisions for all four elements and quantitative targets. I had participated at some of these past stakeholder consultations, where I represented Tetra Pak Europe and Alcoa Europe, and industry throughout the supply chain was ready and willing to take action. There was not much choice because legislation was forthcoming. We are not talking about “voluntary” guidelines: producers putting packaging on the market had to recycle X% amount per year, every year. And we all had to pitch-in. All packaging placed on the market in the Community and all packaging waste, whether it is used or released at industrial, commercial, office, shop, service, household or any other level, regardless of the material used, was affected.

Recovery organisations were established, reporting guidelines implemented, best practice was shared across the supply chain and in packaging trade associations, communication to consumers was enhanced and new opportunities were created. The objective of the Directive is to decrease the amount of final waste going to landfill. And it’s working.

When I mention this objective to my counterparts in North America, particularly in Canada, I usually get one of the following answers: “we have a lot of land in Canada so we can create landfills in remote areas”, or “our population density is not comparable to Europe so we don’t have the same pressing need to recycle and recover packaging waste”, or ” the current market for recycled material has collapsed”, or my favourite “we recycle all our packaging waste in Quebec as we are the greenest province”.  Groundwater contamination, litter, sustainable consumption, etc. are never considered.

I invite all readers to take a look at the Recyc-Québec site and to ask some fundamental questions:  Where are the targets outlined? How much packaging has been placed on the provincial market? And how much of it has been recycled? Landfilled? The often quoted number is 60% recycled. From what? Compared to what year? The numbers and efforts remain fuzzy.

In early 2006, Coca-Cola bottlers wanted to withdraw the deposit fee on some of their packaging in Quebec. It was barely noticed in the media and the government reached a deal with the company to continue the programme. The deposit fee on most packaging in Quebec is .05 cents. This is very low compared to other jurisdictions and, although it provides some incentives to consumers to return their aluminum can, the credibility and viability of the system is now at stake. In the Montreal area, we have these green open boxes which will be replaced because, due to weather conditions, most of the used packaging winds up on the street. I usually add my empty wine bottles in the bin, including those with a deposit fee (some wine bottles have it, others don’t…?) because I know it will be collected by the homeless on the street. I don’t think this logic applies to suburban areas. The government-owned liquor store SAQ, which has ceased to distribute plastic bags to consumers since the start of the year, does not have a recycling program in place for its used wine and beer bottles. And this is government owned! Maybe it would be more effective if it were privatized?

The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) is having a stakeholder consultation on packaging (comments can be submitted until 29 May 2009). The Packaging Association of Canada (PAC) does not mention how much packaging waste is recycled in Canada nor in the individual provinces. The environment section on their site does not have one mention of what the impact of packaging waste is on the environment nor how their member companies are working on new packages that are “designed for the environment” nor any mention of LCA or packaging waste studies. The most depressing aspect is that many companies, such as Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Unilever, P&G, Tetra Pak, Heineken, Danone, etc. are undertaking significant efforts as regards packaging waste in Europe but are silent on this side of the Atlantic because of the lack of regulations in Canada. In such a case, how would Corporate Responsibility be measured?

What are our home grown companies, such as Liberté, doing as regards packaging waste? In this case, the biggest environmental impact is the packaging content itself (i.e.: yogurt – dairy production) hence the packaging waste side of the equation should be easy to deal with so why are efforts to recycle and recover more of its packaging not done? One can applaud the efforts being done by Rona as regards its eco/ green products. But they too missed the boat on the recycling and recovery side. Their efforts are applauded when it comes to FSC and other initiatives. The challenge is to put those efforts in numbers, such as via yearly measurable and verifiable targets.

The market potentials are huge and the environment gains are even bigger. It’s time to show some leadership.

For more info:

Grace Barrasso

Economics and quality of life: beyond ideology

We live in a market economy where spending is an essential feature of our lives and buying “stuff” is an economic indicator which measures progress. But it does not take into account happiness, respect, environmental degradation and poor air quality –just to name a few examples. As such, a team of experts in the United States and France are now working to examine how to expand the GDP concept to calculate these other important indicators. A few months, the International Herald Tribune published an article on this issue. A similar article also appeared in The Times of India. The European Commission, in partnership with its’ Directortate-General of the Environment and Statistics, have launched an initiative called Beyond GDP. Having worked in Europe for over ten years, it is obvious that the European continent is light years ahead of North America, and Canada in particular, when it comes to environmental well-being.

If we examine this closer and ask why this is the case, the answer is that in Europe, climate change and environmental issues are not divided along ideology. In North America, climate change is an ideological issue where the right believe that environmental protection equates to increased regulation and government intervention.  Furthermore, it is their belief that these concepts are being pushed by the Left/ liberals and therefore have launched a series of campaigns to confuse people on climate change. This is starting to change as people are not only understanding more and more the science, but are also actually seeing the changes occurring in their physical environment. As a result, 85% of Americans now agree  that global warming is a problem.

In Europe, the right (Conservatives in the UK, Christian Democrats in Germany) recognize that these are issues to tackle and the sooner, the better. Angela Merkl, the German Chancellor, has  aPhD in theoretical physics (therefore understands the science behind climate change) and works closely with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research to put in place targets for reducing GHG emissions. The Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research was created by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives.

Back in Canada, there is a feeling that the Conservatives want to use climate change more as a political and military instrument. The rise of Arctic sovereignty issues, as seen during 2007, was a result of the Russians planting a flag on the Arctic seabed. The Danes and the Americans are also getting excited over the Arctic because there is no legal agreement on who owns this territory and hence the natural gas and oil resources which can become more accessible as glaciers and ice melts.

Canada is going about this issue the wrong way. We need to move away from our dependence on fossil fuels and we need to tackle climate change by addressing the causes and putting a plan together to reduce this dependence.

Throne Speech and Federal Budget: stepping closer towards action on climate change?

The Speech from the Throne will occur in less than 30 minutes. No red-carpet ceremony, just a low-key speech which will essentially hint at what we Canadians should expect in tomorrow’s federal budget. Many skeptics believe that environment policy, and in particular climate change issues, should be at the back burner as we are going through tough economic times. This is an opportunity for the government to make some significant progress which will enhance economic activity. An interesting article which I came across spells this out as follows:

Eliminating international competitiveness concerns in climate policy*

Countries introducing emissions trading or carbon tax policies typically ‘carve out’ large areas of economic activity, and provide ‘compensation’ particularly to trade-exposed and energy-intensive industries. This is based on concerns about international competitiveness being eroded, and the resulting assumption that there’s a ‘trade-off’ between cutting greenhouse gases and cutting jobs.

Job losses imply activity shifting to other countries not applying carbon policies. Jobs and emissions shift overseas, leading to clear economic costs and job losses for those countries applying such policies, but little or no global reduction in emissions. This is no ‘trade-off’. It’s just a really bad deal.

This so-called ‘trade-off’ arises because such policies target national production of emissions. This production model only works when all countries act together. They haven’t, and they won’t. In fact the Kyoto Protocol itself said that they won’t. History attests to this reality.

Even if the supporters of the UNFCCC and Kyoto did not see it then, we can see it clearly now. The production model has failed, both within Europe and Australia (because of major policy ‘carve-outs’ and exemptions), and more generally (because countries like the USA, China, India, etc, have not adopted similar climate policies).

This is basic economics. When nations act at different times or to different degrees, production models undermine trade competitiveness of early movers compared with others. Late movers don’t follow suit so they can milk trade gains out of early movers. This ruins chances for a global deal.

But we can do better. This ‘trade-off’ is completely avoidable. Countries can reduce greenhouse gases without any carbon or jobs leakage by targeting their consumption of embedded emissions rather than production.

By definition, global emissions production equals global emissions consumption. So we have two roads to get to the same goal: reduction in global emissions. The production road only works when all countries act together. In contrast, the consumption road works even if countries act unilaterally. Why? Because it is designed to eliminate international competitiveness concerns.

So why pursue a production-based model given its now-long history of failure? It’s even less likely to work as the world economy slides into recession. Countries won’t want to suffer more job losses.

The emissions consumption model is practical. It starts with the production information required under current policies. It can use existing value-added tax (or similar) systems to pass carbon cost signals transparently down the supply chain to consumers; exports are zero-rated; and it imposes a trade competitiveness-neutral border tax adjustment on competing imports. This system is already applied in countries with VAT or similar taxes. Like such systems, it is trade competitiveness neutral.

A consumption model gets us to the same global end-point as a production model. But basic economics tells us that it’s much more likely to get us there. Isn’t it high time for the UNFCCC to move to ‘Plan B’ – a consumption model? ‘Plan A’ isn’t working.

* This is a modified and shortened version of an article published in The Australian Financial Review on 15 January 2009.

Let’s see what will happen tomorrow.

Sustainable Consumption: Oxymoron?

The increasing mountain of waste in today’s society inextricably linked to increasing population and over-consumption.  Hence the term “sustainable consumption” is somewhat of an oxymoron as buying stuff will directly impact our ecosystems. Suffice to say that our current economic system is geared to the ever-increasing demand to buy buy and buy. The 20 December 2008 issue of The Economist had an article entitled The Way the Brain Buys where, essentially, it outlined how marketers know the tricks to get people to consume and buy either via advertising, in-store lay-outs, etc. So the question is: what if we redistrbute the way we are taxed and add  a levy on advertising? Can this be one of so many tools to curb our current unsustainable consumption patterns?