The Pet Sustainability Coalition’s packaging initiatives for the pet industry

Across the United States alone, more than 300 million pounds of flexible plastic packaging is created by the pet industry each year. 99% of multi-laminate packaging currently used for most pet food and treats does not have a sustainable end-of-life solution. Large-scale, multi-stakeholder initiatives like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Global Commitment or the US Plastics Pact have identified clear solutions for multi-laminate packaging which targets recyclable, refillable and compostable formats. However, the pet industry has been slow to act.

Lacking resources, support and a collective voice

While packaging ranks among the top 3 most important sustainability issues facing the pet industry, the majority of pet companies rely on part-time staff and lack the adequate tools, resources and support to advance their packaging toward more sustainable outcomes. Companies often turn to existing packaging suppliers for education, but those suppliers generally recommend a variety of solutions that are biased toward their own abilities and solutions. Furthermore, the pet industry does not currently have a collective voice to meet these challenges with a unified approach.

Uniting the pet industry

In 2018, the Pet Sustainability Coalition (PSC) identified packaging as a priority environmental issue and began to serve as a leading force to unite the pet industry around sustainable packaging solutions. Its work includes a multifaceted approach that helps accelerate the business sector’s participation in developing and implementing needed solutions. Not only does PSC serve as a subject-matter expert to the growing community of brands, but it has also pioneered collaborative industry-wide programming.

Examples include:
• Flex-Forward, the pet industry’s first return-to-retail program aimed at collecting and recycling post-consumer multi-laminate packaging
• The PSC Packaging Pledge, a program dedicated to helping companies meet ambitious, transparent, public-facing packaging goals

5 pillars of PSC’s approach

PSC’s approach is built on the 5 pillars of tools, collaboration, on-market, future state and events:

Tools.
Providing tools, thought leadership and resources that support the industry to advance circularity and sustainable packaging.

Collaboration.
Representing the pet industry within the US Plastics Pact and working with specialists within the pet industry as well as global sustainability leaders (such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Closed Loop Partners, The Recycling Partnership and the World Wildlife Fund). The collaborative approach is strengthened by the fact that a large majority of packaging suppliers that service the pet industry are PSC members, allowing PSC to effect change at scale by engaging the entire value chain in solutions.

On-Market.
Driving innovation, leadership, education and sustainability solutions toward decreasing landfill waste through in-store take-back collection of flexible pet food and treat packaging. 99% of the pet food packaging produced for the pet industry is currently unrecyclable. PSC’s return-to-retail pilot program collected over 8,000 lbs of post-consumer packaging, completed 17 different recycling trials, and has resulted in a scalable national recycling solution (using advanced recycling) for the pet industry.

Future State.
Through programs like the PSC Packaging Pledge, PSC is building collaboration, aligned goals, technical expertise and tools to move the pet industry toward recyclable, refillable and compostable solutions.

Events + Education.
Through its online education platform and highly rated multi-day sustainable packaging conference, PSC brings together brands, non-profits, retailers, manufacturers and suppliers to promote education and collaboration to advance sustainable packaging.

PSC Packaging Activator Committee

In an effort to drive collaborative leadership among key stakeholders, this year PSC is launching the PSC Packaging Activator Committee as a multi-stakeholder collaborative group focused on global packaging problems specific to the pet industry. This group will support and shape PSC’s leadership at a high level to ensure that all pet companies have in place the tools needed to meet packaging commitments and challenges.

As the collaboration continues, the group will evolve its mission to include addressing systematic packaging-related issues in the pet industry, such as industry education, labeling initiatives, the co-creation and evolution of packaging solutions, and the development of implementation tools and programs that can help solve one of the pet industry’s biggest areas of impact.

Packaging webinar series

In order to address some frequently mentioned concerns brought by PSC members and Packaging Pledge signatories, PSC will offer a series of sustainable packaging webinars beginning in September.

Every 2 weeks, a new 1-hour webinar will tackle one of the following topics:

• EPR legislation
• Designing packaging for recyclability
• How2Recycle labels
• The Recycling Partnership tools
• PFAS

The overall objective of this series of packaging webinars is to provide the PSC community with expert knowledge and tools regarding sustainable-packaging hot topics, while increasing the confidence of each member during their sustainable packaging journey.

Packaging Supplier Marketplace

The Supplier Marketplace is an online tool where Packaging Pledge signatories can search, filter and evaluate a pre-vetted directory of packaging suppliers that offer sustainable packaging options including recyclable, refillable or compostable solutions.

This enables packaging suppliers to highlight their company’s sustainable packaging offerings to current and new potential customers.

All packaging suppliers that would like to be featured in this Supplier Marketplace need to complete a supplier application, which is vetted and approved by PSC. This includes information such as the company’s participation in sustainability certifications and recognitions (i.e. How2Recycle), the types of packaging it provides (i.e. flexible film pouch), and specs regarding product testing (i.e. ASTM standards).

With representation from producers, suppliers, manufacturers, brands, distributors and retailers, PSC is uniquely positioned to engage the pet industry at scale to participate in the wider movement toward sustainable packaging in a harmonized manner across the industry. Therefore, PSC aims to serve as the epicenter of collaborative solutions to address the sustainability challenges of the pet industry.