Dive Brief:
- Approximately 75% of organizations that voluntarily established sustainable packaging targets will sunset those goals by 2028, predicts consulting firm Gartner. Instead, these companies — primarily brands and CPGs, but also potentially packaging manufacturers — are shifting their strategies to align with emerging legislative guidelines, such as extended producer responsibility laws, the firm says.
- About 90% of companies’ 2025 sustainable packaging commitments will be unmet, according to John Blake, senior director analyst in Gartner’s supply chain practice. “We saw quite a few organizations dial back their goals last year and the beginning of this year, and it looks like we’re on that track that most of the goals set for 2025 won’t be delivered by the end of this year,” he said.
- Gartner offered recommendations for companies during this shift. For instance, companies should be proactive and start adapting their sustainability strategies to align with legislation now to avoid negative consequences, such as the growing costs of EPR, down the road.
Dive Insight:
Companies’ transitions away from voluntary goals and toward legislative alignment is Gartner’s latest prediction related to sustainable packaging targets, many of which were set in 2018. The firm consistently has projected that companies won’t meet most of these packaging sustainability goals. In 2023, Gartner predicted that by 2026 at least 20% of brands would move away from voluntary goals to eliminate or recycle plastic packaging and instead focus on reducing their packaging’s carbon footprint.
Legislation driving change within brands’ and packaging companies’ sustainability strategies is prompting a lot of industry discussion at the moment. For instance, GreenBlue Executive Director Paul Nowak said at the Packaging Recycling Summit in June that “we are in a watershed moment” and EPR is driving the most change he has seen in the packaging sustainability space in 30 years.
State EPR isn’t the only legislation Gartner views as influential to sustainable packaging goals. Multinational companies have to take into consideration other countries’ EPR regulations, Blake said, and Europe’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation is “having a major impact.”
It’s still early days for states’ packaging EPR programs in the United States, with Oregon becoming the first to formally implement its system on July 1. Many companies are still trying to understand requirements for that law and the others coming down the pike, such as in Colorado.
Final details for much of this legislation are yet to come, and they sometimes change a bit before implementation, Blake acknowledged. “So there is a challenge of trying to be very proactive,” he said. “But even just the idea or the realization that they need to be having the discussion about legislation and its role in their longer-term packaging strategies” is an important step.
In addition to aligning with legislation early, Gartner’s other recommendations to companies include accelerating packaging redesign cycles and adapting supply chains and logistics for reusable packaging systems. There’s also potential to incorporate reuse at the consumer level, although those programs can be more difficult to execute than at the transportation level, Blake said.
“I anticipate we’ll see more of that piloted and tested and implemented, because it does align with much of the legislation that is being issued,” he said.
