Sustainable Packaging Coalition Holds Spring Meeting

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) held its annual open spring meeting April 20 to 21 at the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center in Atlanta. The event assembled 150 representatives from more than 60 companies to attend an open series of educational presentations and to exchange ideas on creating innovations throughout the packaging supply chain.

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is an industry working group that says it is “dedicated to creating a more includes more than 50 member companies, such as the Coca-Cola Co., Albertsons, Ball Corp., Starbucks, Target, PepsiCo/FritoLay and McDonald’s.

“The SPC’s mission is to educate industry decision-makers and equip them with the tools necessary to make informed design choices toward the goal of creating a fully sustainable packaging system,” according to a press release. To that end, the open meeting included a series of panels on topics including corporate metrics for sustainability, green chemistry, green marketing and eco-labeling, recycling and recovery systems, bio-based packaging and the WRAP Study of Sustainable Packaging.

Speakers included Scott Vitters and Robert Long of Coca-Cola; Gary Parker of PIRA; David Long  of SC Johnson; Ed Klein of TetraPak; Amy Zettlemoyer of Sam’s Club; Lauren Heine of GreenBlue; Tony Kingsbury of Dow; Kirsten Ritchie of Scientific Certification Systems; Jim Kohm of the Federal Trade Commission; Steve Mojo of the Biodegradable Products Institute; Glenn Johnston of the Society of the Plastics Industry; Darryl Young of the National Recycling Coalition; Matt Cotton of the United States Composting Council; Ron Gonen of RecycleBank; Tom Borchardt of Stora Enso; Laura Rowell and Pat McGee of MeadWestvaco; Ramani Narayan of Michigan State University; and Scott Ballantine of Microsoft.

The SPC holds two annual meetings, one of which is open to non-members. Last November, the SPC held a members-only meeting in Portland, Ore., following the September release of its first major project A Vision for Sustainable Packaging (Version 1.0). Current projects include the development of a tool for comparing the material health and sustainability characteristics of packaging designs and the development of a design guidance document to inform the design of environmentally responsible packaging.

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a project of GreenBlue, a non-profit, 501(c) 3 tax-exempt organization based in Charlottesville, Va. For more information, visit the GreenBlue Web site (www.greenblue.org).