By Christine Miklosko, Senior Manager, GreenBlue
When it comes to packaging and labeling legislation, if you think we’re entering a new era with no clear path ahead, you’re half right. It’s true that we are entering a new era of packaging policies in the U.S., but we’re not driving without a map. We have tools to guide our industry’s transition — now we just need to use them.
This month, I attended Specright’s Spec Summit in Nashville, Tennessee. If you’re not familiar with Specright, they’re a product and packaging data management company. At How2Recycle, where data drives every label assessment we make, the insights from the Spec Summit crystallized three key takeaways about our industry’s path forward in this new era of policy:
- Sustainability initiatives aren’t “nice-to-have” anymore — they’re table stakes
- Adaptation will require creative thinking and collaboration
- And with the right approach, we can find opportunities in the challenge of change
Let’s dive in.
1. Sustainability initiatives aren’t “nice-to-have” anymore — they’re table stakes
We all know that sustainability initiatives have evolved from nice-to-have to table stakes. But do we know how compliance in a new era of regulation will change our internal operations?
This year, as the first Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging goes into effect in one of the five U.S. states with EPR laws, packaging sustainability and legal compliance are becoming intertwined. Plus, many states — and some of the EPR laws — are looking to regulate labels and on-pack education.
The implications for these laws are shifting the paradigm for the packaging life cycle, and managing your packaging and materials data can make or break your adaptation to this new landscape.
What can you do? Well, you don’t have to go it alone. “A new crop of packaging and software service providers such as Lorax EPI, Aura, Specright are ready to help companies get a handle on the data they will need to report their progress to countries and shareholders,” writes The Sustainable Packaging Coalition Director Olga Kachook. “Especially for professionals new to EPR, it’s important to lean on these service providers — and their wealth of knowledge from other markets — rather than going solo and starting from scratch.”
2 . Adapting to this new policy landscape will require creative thinking and collaboration
Why call the policy EPR when you could call it “Waste to Jobs”? That’s the question Tennessee State Senator Heidi Campbell asked the crowd at the Specright Summit during her session on advancing EPR in a “red state.”
Just to be clear, at How2Recycle we don’t lobby policy, we comply with it — but this presentation still shed light on the creative thinking that we’ll need to mobilize our organizations to adapt to this changing landscape. For her, advancing EPR in Tennessee would require a rebranding, elevating a popular value proposition (jobs creation), and identifying the industries that stand to benefit from more recycled materials.
What does this mean for you? As you work to comply with EPR or labeling legislation, the lessons we can take away are:
- We can learn to speak the language of our colleagues in finance and legal.
- We can identify and elevate the value to them as we adapt to these changes (most obviously no fees, no legal penalties!).
- We can find stakeholders that can help us champion the sustainable initiatives we’re hoping (or need) to advance.
3. We’ll need to overcome friction and fuel change
How are couch sales and packaging change management related? In a session by Clinical Professor of Strategy David Schonthal, we explored the competing ideas of “fuel” and “friction” in the context of change management (admittedly, a term our industry might tire of in the years ahead).
According to Professor Schonthal, when we’re trying to drive change, all too often we focus too much on fuel. Most people get trapped in the idea that the best way to sell an idea is to “fuel” the idea by adding value and amplifying benefits until the intended audience can no longer say no.
But this foregoes the friction. There will always be friction working against the changes we seek — elements like inertia and the effort (perceived or real) required to make change are hard to overcome. He used a couch company’s sales strategy as an example. You can offer a sale, but when people aren’t sure what to do with their old couch, they opt to do nothing. The solution: The couch company started offering to take customers’ old couches away. Sales skyrocketed.
The key to thriving in this new regulatory landscape isn’t just about driving change forward — it’s about eliminating the roadblocks within our organizations to make swift, meaningful change.
Want to learn more about how How2Recycle is adapting to the changing landscape? Check out our How2Recycle Forward campaign.