The Importance of Sustainable Packaging - Free FMI Playbook

The Sustainability of Packaging has long been a consideration, beginning with ensuring the product is effectively delivered to the customer in an efficient design. However, there are additional sustainability considerations that need to be addressed due to the limited supply of packaging raw materials, high resource needs for processing, low recovery rates of used packaging, and growing leakage of used packaging to the land and oceans.

There is growing effort across the range of sustainability opportunities for packaging. For example, the Consumer Goods Forum works to support responsible fiber sourcing, and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is accelerating focus on improving the circularity of plastic packaging. Further, legislation and regulations such as Extended Producer Responsibility and packaging bans are adding dynamics to the marketplace.

As a result, the FMI Sustainability Executive Committee and its Sustainable Packaging Subcommittee determined that there was a need to distill the many topics and resources into a manageable guide on sustainable packaging.

SQFI is a Division of FMI and sees the packaging manufacturers as strong partners in tackling this important issue. To this end, FMI has published the free FMI Sustainable Packaging Playbook 2021.

The playbook was created to assist retailers and their suppliers in better understanding key approaches and considerations recommended to advance toward efficient design, responsible sources, and circular systems for packaging and to support internal business operations as well as effective trading partner collaboration to advance sustainable packaging. For example, the contents of this guide can help partners align on what is considered recyclable in the United States or align on other definitions and can be used in planning for new item introductions or packaging reformulations.

For each sustainable packaging topic, the playbook outlines a list of key actions to take, and some next steps to consider, as progress gets made. There’s even a tool for evaluating if a packaging change has unintended consequences. The playbook includes a detailed guide to support progress in circular systems for packaging by designing for recycling.

Download the FMI Sustainable Packaging Playbook 2021 and begin your collaboration and trading partner planning.

Download the FMI Sustainable Packaging Playbook 2021