Webinar: How to Shift to More Sustainable Packaging in the ‘EPR’ Era

Hello. Hello and welcome to today’s webinar sponsored by Pure Strategies. How to shift to more sustainable packaging in the EPR era. I’m John Davies, president of networks at Trellis Group, and I’m pleased as always to welcome listeners from around the world. Before we begin, a few housekeeping details. This webinar platform has a number of features I’d like to point out. As shown on the slide, you can resize and move around the various windows on the webinar platform to optimize your viewing experience. On the bottom of your screen, there’s a toolbar with various buttons. You can download the resources from today’s webinar by clicking on the button marked resources. Note, this webinar is being recorded and the recording will be shared with all registrants later today. If you have questions for today’s speakers, simply click on the Q&A button and type your questions into the Q&A window that appears. We’ll be fielding those later on in this program, but don’t hesitate to ask along the way. You can also chat with other attendees at any time by clicking the group chat button. And finally, feel free to share what you’re learning with your social networks by tagging us at trellis. I’m very excited today. So joining me will be Britt Lundren, senior director of sustainability and government affairs at Stonyfield Farms, Cheryl Baldwin, vice president of sustainability consulting at Pure Strategies, Staca Bentley, director of sustainability and social impact at MegaFood, and David Clark, chief sustainability officer at Amcor. And before I hand it over to Cheryl, let’s do a quick poll. So, how has extended producer responsibility, ERP, in the US influence your company’s sustainable packaging plans for the next two years? Answer as many as applicable.Is it more innovation in sustainable packaging anticipated? Are you updating your strategic approachto advancing sustainable packaging? Are you building out your first strategic approach to advancing sustainable packaging? Will you be optimizing packaging design to reduce EPR fees? Are you just getting started on EPR andgetting your data organized? Or shame on you, have you not started on EPR or isit not applicable to your business?Let’s see what our results are.Okay, Amber, you know what? I didn’t have the live view, so I can’t see them.So, I’m going to pass it off to Cheryl, and she can read the results and see if she’s surprised by any of them.Yeah. So I can see that the top answer looks to be more innovation insustainable packaging is anticipated followed by will be optimizing packagingdesign to reduce EPR fees. Um the fir the top answer did surprise me umpleasantly surprise me to hear that more innovation is anticipatedum pretty high. So that was 41% of the respondents answering that. Uh then thenext one was um we’ll be optimizing for fees. That was 35%. Um that’s uh expected. That’sprobably what most companies are thinking they’re going to do. Um let’s see who Nobody uh responded they haven’tstarted. Maybe uh you you shamed them into thinking that was the right answer.um 25% said they it was not applicable and then a whole range of all the otheranswers along the way. So very interesting. Great. Well, we’ll share those later on,but uh for now, let’s let’s start Cheryl with the presentation.Great. Well, thanks John for the intro and uh looking forward to having the discussion today. But before we get tothat, I did want to just um kind of set the stage a bit um on where we’re atwith sustainable packaging. It’s one of the topics that companies have beenworking on in sustainability for a long time. Um some of the organized effortswere getting started uh you know over 25 years ago. The sustainable packagingcoalition got started in 2004 and a number of efforts have uh startedorganizing around that time. And while there were definitely been some important wins along the way, it therehas been limited success uh since then. But the good news is that what we’reseeing is a real shift in momentum to the point where we’re thinking that 2025is going to be a year of an inflection point largely because scale is going tobe reached through the extended producer responsibility laws. So, uh, 2025 is theyear that these laws in the US, uh, started being implemented, first in Oregon, followed by Colorado andCalifornia with more to come. Um, so this is definitely looking to be, uh,something to pay attention to. So, we’re going to dive in just briefly with anoverview on extended producer responsibility. Glad to see that everybody has done something about it ifit’s relevant to you. Um, so this will be a real quick uh uh refresh. Soextended producer responsibility, the acronym we’re going to use is EPR for that is a policy vehicle that uh statesare starting to apply to product packaging. Um, so while this has been avehicle used for specific products or specific packages, what’s changing isit’s applying pretty broadly to most product packages. So just about everycompany is somehow connected to EPR in some way. And um the reason why theselaws are being um pulled together at different states is because the uhrecycling rates and recovery rates of packaging materials has been pretty low.And these types of laws have proven to be effective at increasing recovery rates. And the way they do that isshifting the financial responsibility um to the producers or companies that are bringing the packaging to the market.And they’re the ones that are um ma uh driving the management uh infrastructuredevelopment, consumer education, and other necessary uh resources to reallyensure overall success. Um producers aren’t doing it themselves, though.they’re really um working through another entity and that’s this pro inthe middle of the slide which stands for um producer responsibility organizationand in the US uh the circular action alliance um which many call uh CIA isthe group that is um managing the states with EPR laws that have been implementedso far. So the pro in the US at this point is CAA. Um so that’s kind of aquick overview, but what is interesting about EPR is not just you know what yousaw and the hope that it um will and the expectation that it will improve recovery rates. Um what’s there’s acouple unique things um that help drive that change. And one of it is that uhEPR is requiring companies to report their packaging data um and then payfees on the amount of packaging that uh they reported. And for many companies,this is the first time that they have organized packaging data um at all, letalone their whole portfolio of packaging data. So this is a a new effort for manycompanies and so um since we’ve been doing this for a while especially forcompanies that have been out ahead of the curve and then certainly for the companies that have been um uh workingwith Oregon and Colorado’s reporting requirements that have happened already. we have a few best practices that thatcan help companies start to think about how can they continue to improve um and be prepared to do well with this part ofEPR. So, first off, um it’s important for a company to look at each state’slaws to understand where they are obligated to be uh reporting and payingfees. And that connects to their definition of when are they the producerand for what materials are they the producer of that are in the scope of thelaw. And so covered materials is a term typically used uh it refers to the typesof packages that a company may be um obligated to report and pay fees uh onin terms of the scope. So first need to understand that and then you need tostart to think about where is the data for those covered materials going tocome from and it can come from a number of different places within anorganization like packaging R&D procurement marketing several othertypes of um functions but it also may need to come from outside your organizations like your suppliers and itcould be different for different covered materials. So, you know, starting off with what materials are in scope, thenthinking about what are the sources of data for those materials and thenthinking about how are you going to calculate the use of those materials inthe state where you’re reporting. And so, there’s different method options and choices to be made. And um that is thetopic for another webinar. Um but there are different ways to manage differenttypes of data that you have and then ultimately once you’ve done the calculation you’ve organized yourpackaging in information in what we call an inventory. So then you can look atstate by state within the same data set and make it easier to report. Umultimately it’s important to document everything that uh is on this slide andwe call that a packaging inventory management plan because you’ve made decisions about what’s in scope uh whatthe data sources a calculation methodology all these things have been decisions that are important to documentso that when you go to do an update you’re able to understand um where your starting point was. So having that planis an important step forward. So EPR is helping bring data forward to companiesand for many companies it’s new data that they haven’t had a chance to have their eyes on in in the past. And sowith that there’s a lot of insights and ahas and some of the as a result there’sprobably some lowhanging fruit or quick wins. Um what we see as like commonsurprises or things that pop up when companies see this data is that they uhwere surprised that they were using some materials like PVC for example. They thought maybe they were out of thatmaterial but turns out that it was in something they hadn’t really thought to track or didn’t know was in. Uh, anotherthing that we see is companies often don’t have the information to know forsure if they’re using recycled content or responsibly sourced fiber. And sohaving that information also is an important piece of the program. And thenobviously once they have the data, it’s become clear that there’s a lot of packaging to manage. Um, and socompanies often want to think about well what are we going to do with this? what what are the aims or targets and maybeit’s aligning with the EPR aims or optimizing for fees as we heard fromsome people um or maybe it’s something else like I mentioned there’s other data insights beyond EPR that you find fromorganizing this like some of the responsible sourcing information so oncecompanies have the data typically they start to think about well what are we going to do about this what are our aims with it and then building out a plan orroadmap to improve on those aims that ultimately lead to some innovation. Sowe’ll talk a little bit about some aims. So this is just a quick summary view ofsome of the aims from EPR in the United States. You can see that largely there’sa big focus on driving towards reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging. umalong with maybe a closer look at how much packaging is reusable and alsolooking at adding recycled content and some source reduction around plastic aswell. Um so these are just uh some ways to start thinking about what are those aims uh that our company can worktowards best to at least align with EPR if not exceed that and thinking whatyour company can do to get out ahead of some of these laws. So to build the plan then to or roadmapto uh start to progress against those aims and get out ahead of APR, we usethese three Rs to think about you know the what the data is showing you. So thinking about how to refine, redesignand re-imagine packaging. So you’ve got the data, you’ve got your aims, and soyou start to build your plan by thinking about well where can we refine? So things like lightweing,um removing some components, uh adding recycled content, getting rid ofmaterial health issues. So like some important tweaks that are are are easyto see. And then you start to think about, well, where are the redesign opportunities? How do we want to shiftto um packaging that’s more recyclable? Maybe that requires a material change,for example. Um and then thinking about where are there opportunities to reimagine the package? So can we shiftto reusable refillable options? Is there maybe a format change that can lead touh a different material and a more recyclable option? So thinking throughso those like refine, redesign and re-imagine opportunities help build outyour road map ultimately and help identify where some innovation canreally be happening. So just to kind of wrap it all up. So we are past our earlyera in sustainable packaging. We are solidly in what we’re calling the EPR era where companies is it’s it’ssustainable packaging is going to be reaching a scale because companies are required to look very closely at theirdata report and pay fees and inherently with those fees there are some built-inincentives for companies to work towards those EPR aims or more sustainablepackaging and so we see this building momentum to what um we’re calling thenext era or the future where companies have looked clear carefully at fully maximizing the opportunities to refine,redesign and re-imagine packaging. So, um this information that I mentionedtoday is in one of the resources that you have accessible to you in thedownloads along with these slides. Um and with that, I’ll pass it back to John.Thanks, Cheryl. That was great. Um you know, I have a few questions. We’ve got some great questions coming in. Um, soI’m going to start with you, Staca. You’re with Megap Food. I guess first just introduce yourself and share, youknow, what your role is at Megap Food. Yeah, sure. Um, first I want to thankPure Strategies and Trellis for hosting this webinar. I’m excited to be part of the conversation. I am the director ofsustainability and social impact at Megafood. Megapood is a BC Corp and 1%for the planet vitamin and supplement company. We use 50 years of scientificexpertise to craft efficacious vitamins and minerals powered by plants. And myrole is really to reduce its environmental impact around the ways that we source, make, and deliver ourproducts and improve our social impact through advocacy, giving, and um Jedirelated initiatives. Great. So here’s my first question for you. How is Mega Foods connecting EPRand sustainability and advancing sustainable packaging?So we all know packaging is complex. The regulatory landscape is confusing basedon the state and everybody has a part to play. Government, suppliers, brands, retailers, consumers. At Megapood,packaging is important because it’s the first touch point in which a consumer interacts with our product. Um, we sellin multiple different materials like glass, plastic, a variety of different plastics and fiber. Um, it’s complicatedbecause we manufacture in-house and work with comands. We have small vitamin bottles and the dimensions of those canimpact end of life and recyclability. So we have sustainability goals acrosseverything that I mentioned. So the way that we source and manufacture um and packaging is no different. So we’ve beenmonitoring the regulation and came up with a goal um to achieve 100%recyclability and a 25% plastic reduction by 2030.This is in line with our other 2030 sustainability goals, but is two years ahead of a lot of the EPR regulationlike SB54. Um the plastic um the plastic reductiongoal is aggressive and I think it’s going to take transformative change, butwe are making progress on it. And I thought I’d share a few examples of what we’ve been doing.So over the past two years with the help of peer strategies, we’ve measured our2023 and 2024 packaging footprints and made a road map to understand how we’llmeet the goals. Some of the solutions are easy um but we know that everychange takes time and some of the solutions are larger and require innovation.We’ve also crafted a few guides or policies. One informs our new productdevelopment process. So when we design a product, we can design it to be recyclable and made with reduced plasticfrom the start. We still have some work on socializing this. We just created it this year, but I think it’s going to bea great tool given the complexities. We know that if you have a bottle that’s recyclable, but the label is not, itthen ends up in the landfill. We’ve crafted a sustainable fiber policy to help guide our fiber purchasing. Sothink all boxes, are they coming from a recycled source or have the certification to show they’reresponsibly sourced? Um and lastly, we’ve created some co-manufacturing guidance so that we can be engaging withour commands on these packaging questions and improvements. We’re starting to execute umimprovements. So going back to that triple R model, we’ve refined our gummy bottle to be made with 18% less plasticto have more recycled content. So 100% PCR in the bottle, 30% in the cap, andwe’re using a new label that’s APR compliant to allow for recyclability.We’re assessing new materials and models to reimagine our packaging. And finally,our impact team is working handinhand with our regulatory team to report into the various states. And I think it’simportant to acknowledge that most sustainability teams are very small and so it is a big lift to measure andimprove and report on it. Um, but in summary, I’d say that the regulation’s not perfect, but it is giving us a northstar um for our goals in shaping our packaging strategy.Fantastic. Thanks, Staca. We’ll come back to you for some more questions. And yeah, audience, keep uh putting them inthe Q&A. We’ll get to them shortly, but I want to switch over to Dave fromAmcore. And Dave, first share just what is Amcore Core for those who don’t know.Yep. Hi. Hi. Thanks, John. Hi, everyone. Um Amcor is a packaging producer. So, we make packaging and then sell it toothers that would put their products inside and then deliver to to consumers so that they’re safe and fresh. uhwherever consumers are going to use them. So we make packaging for food, beverages, home and personal careproducts, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and other types of specialty products. Um interestingly enough in thediscussions typically MCOR is not considered the producer in an EPR program. It would be our customer or thethe brand or whoever is actually putting the final product into the market. So we work very closely with our customers onimplications of EPR but we would not be considered the producer in most cases.Great. So how has AMOR been working with companies as they start on their EPRjourney in the US? Well, it’s interesting. We operate in 140 countries around the world. So we’vebeen working with companies in EPR systems going back to the 1990s. Um andtypically what we see is the the value proposition for packaging changes with the introduction of EPR. Um in awell-designed system where we have different fees that are paid for different types of packaging and veryoften there are modulated fees around recyclability or recycled content. We wesee economic drivers driving toward the types of things Cheryl was talking about with more sustainable packaging. And thediscussion becomes how do I optimize my packaging to deliver for the customer and represent my brand but at the sametime how do I really optimize my total cost around fees. So we can look at doesit make sense to change materials to a different material? Does it make sense to try to lightweight where it may nothave been economically viable before? Does recycled content impact the total cost of my package either through lowerfees or by creating a market and a demand which will ultimately lower fees? Because in a good a well-designedsystem, the fees should be based on how difficult is it to collect my package and and sort it to get into a recyclingsystem and how valuable is it to recyclers after that. So, if you have a package that’s easy to sort and recycleand is worth a lot to recyclers, you will pay a lower fee. And and that’s what we’re drivingriving to trying todrive toward where you have financial incentives and economic economic and environmental incentives that that allline up. Fantastic. And I want to bring in ourfinal speaker, Britt. Um, first for that one person in our audience who doesn’tknow what who Stony Field is, can you share give a little background about the company?Sure. Hi, thanks so much for having me here. I’m Britt Longrren. I’m senior director of sustainability andgovernment affairs at Stonyfield. And Stonyfield is a organic yogurt companybased in New Hampshire, but we sell our products nationwide.Great. So, how has Stonyfield Organic been innovating on sustainable packagingover the years and are there any recent innovations?Yeah, sure. Happy to talk about that. You Stonyfield got started back in 1983and we have always been a company with a mission. Sustainability has always beena part of what we’re trying to do. And back in 1983, frankly, it was a loteasier to improve the sustainability of our packaging, right? Once the business got up and running and we could askquestions like, “How do we improve this?” I think that the first thing that folks uh may not realize, um, butStonyfield was the first company to take away plastic lids off of single servecups. So, you if you buy yogurt, you know that in quartz you still have a plastic lid today, but on a singleserve, it’s just foil. That was Stonyfield’s innovation and at the time it was really a big advancement in termsof reducing the overall amount of material that was contained in ourpackaging. I would say that it has been uphill since then to identify newopportunities to improve the sustainability of a plastic single serve packaging. But it does continue to becore to our our business sustainability strategy. So these days we have ascience-based target and to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and that is really the driver for a lot ofsustainability initiatives across the business. Packaging represents about 6%of our total greenhouse gas footprint as a business. So it’s not a huge part ofthat footprint but it’s important. And of course packaging sustainability isalso important because of the consumer and retailer perspective. So, we’re hearing from consumers that they’reconcerned about plastic packaging and plastic waste. We’re hearing from retailers that they want us to use moresustainable formats. And now we’re hearing from states in the form of these new EPR regulations that are pushingmanufacturers to take full life cycle responsibility for their products. So,several years ago, we decided to refresh our packaging sustainability strategy to bring it up to date and ensure that wecould meet all of these different needs. and we engaged pure strategies to support us in that work. And so theyhelped us build a new roadmap across all of our packaging formats that wouldconsider these consumer retailer perspectives and then also take into account what’s technically feasible forthese different packaging types. And they had us helped us to set near and long-term goals for packagingsustainability. So, our long-term goal now centers on having all of our products be um eitherbiio-based, all of our packaging products be either biio-based or made from recycled content by 2030. And nearterm, we have a couple of projects that we think are the the best places to start. So, the the first place that westarted was on our pouch line. Our yogurt pouches are an important part ofour product portfolio. They’re a relatively new part of our product portfolio and there’s just incrediblegrowth happening in the pouch segment in retail right now. It’s outpacing therest of the kids segment by about 10 percentage points. And so it’s a totalit’s a you know significant portion of our total brand volume at this point. But the issue is that first generationpouches are composed of different layers of different types of plastic and insome cases even a layer of aluminum. And this makes the pouch more stable interms of preserving the the shelf life of the product. But it obviously alsopresents some real recycling challenges. Um, we have the inherent difficulties ofcurbside recycling of flexible films in general, but then even if you were ableto get this pouch to a material recovery facility, a MURF, that the the MURF hasno way of separating that pouch into its different component layers. So, we knewthat redesigning pouches to be more compatible with future recycling streamswould be really key towards improving our overall packaging sustainability.And if you’re going to think about designing for recyclability, there are a lot of different things that you have to put into the mix there. You have tothink about material, the color, the closure material, coatings, additives,inks, adhesives, the shape, and the size. And all of this led us down a roadof developing an all polyethylene pouch or PE that could um get us someimmediate source reduction in terms of the overall amount of material in the pouch and hopefully support futurerecycling in you know as we improve the viability of recycling streams. Um andit wasn’t cheap for us to do this. So this was didn’t represent an immediate cost savings which of course is a anobstacle that you have to overcome in the business to move a project like this forward. And we were really forward wewere really fortunate to um get some support from the northeast dairy business innovation center which is afarm bill funded um grant center that supports dairy businesses, processorsand farmers in improving sustainability. So, we did receive about 250,000 fromthe DBIC to help us in implementing this project and deframe the added cost ofthe new materials. And I just want to be really clear that this project isn’t going to help us inthe near term with EPR because MURFs still can’t handle pouches. So, we still have more work to do there. But, we arehopeful that recycling infrastructure will evolve over time. And so we wereable to get some great wins from this. Not only we started with our Yoaby product line, but we we realized that wecould take the lightweighted caps to other high volume SKUs that we have. Andso overall, we were able to improve the material composition, reduce the amountof material, and lightweight our pouches by 13% in total. and we eliminated50,000 pounds of plastic and reduced the greenhouse gas emissions associated with those pouches by 170,000 pounds. So,it’s just a start, but we’re excited by these results and excited to see what we can do next with with the pouch line andwith other products. And I just want to share that we do have some things in the resource section of this webinar. So, weworked with Pure Strategies to create a um a case study and a how-to guide onhow we did this work. And those re those uh documents are linked in the resource section of the webinar.Thanks. Great. Thanks, Brett. And I I love a product called Yo Baby. Um, you know,while we’re on the topic of innovation, Dave, um, can you share a few packaginginnovations that Ampor has helped uh with that align with EPR aims?Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um, I would say what what we’ve done over the last five years or so is gone through the entireportfolio of of types of products that Amcor puts on the market and redevelopeda platform that we can use for the requirements of the different types of packages. So um for example, if you havea hot fill retortable product that um you know may have neededto go into a high temperature package and have gone through a heat cycle, we now have a recyclable structure that umcan withstand that and that is in the market in in several places now. Um eliminating as as Brit said themulti-layer multiaterial types of packages in the past. Uh we’ve developed packages for different categories, forexample, meat and cheese or um pharmaceuticals that may have used materials in the past that would not beconsidered recyclable. So now there’s a recyclable alternative for for all of those. So it’s been a real rethink ofour portfolio and we went from about 60% of the packages that we made being recyclable five years ago to havingofferings for over 95% of our portfolio now. So, so those packages are availablefor people who want to make the change or when the change is required by law. Um, we’ve also been making some reallygood progress in terms of adding more recycled content to our packaging, almost tripling that in the last aboutseven years. Um, now we’re using uh well over 300,000 tons of recycled plasticevery year, as well as growing our offerings in paper and metals for companies who are trying to move out ofplastic into other formats which doesn’t always meet sustainability criteria butsometimes meet uh consumer expectations or or other things that um are alsoimportant when you’re looking at packaging. So quite a bit of innovation going on.Uh Dave, I’ve got an audience question here. Since you brought up uh the the sort of um range of of packaging thatyou deal with, do the EPR laws look at food packaging differently than consumergoods packaging um you know because food packaging has different requirements um than thanconsumer goods. In my experience in general, typically no. I I mean that you know the packaginggoes into the recycling stream and the intent of EPR is to you know fundinnovation and collection of that packaging regardless of whether it’s a food package or something else. Um thereare certainly requirements that we need to look at in terms of barrier and strength and safety for food packagingthat are different but I think those all get incorporated into the packaging design.Great. And uh Staca Britt um we’ve got a question here. I’m going to try and uhget it sorted the right way. But so internal alignment in many areas ofsustainability can be difficult and especially when there’s bigger changesor complications with the changes. How you know Staca I’ll start with you. How have you managed through this and howdid you get buy in from the rest of the organization? Yeah, great question. I think there’sthree key things um for us. So, understanding motivation, taking time toassess, and also not having tunnel vision have all been important. So, if Igo into each of those really quickly with sustainability work, it’s so important to understand why keystakeholders are motivated. Is it financial impact, regulatory compliance,consumer perception, or just because it’s the right thing to do? Um, EPR is giving us just another reason why weshould be engaging in sustainable packaging and it’s been really important to educate our teams internally earlyand often. So, Pure Strategies has been great in that they’ve presented to our organization and shared updates on theEPR requirements um or shared some of the results from some of our um road mapping exercises and data collectionexercises. The second piece is around taking our time to assess. Um I think it’s reallyimportant that we take our time before implementing any transformative change as the regulation shakes out. It’simportant and also we’re seeing hurdles internally. So it’s really important we work crossf functionally getting inputfrom every department. A few examples um we want our products and packaging todeliver on quality and as we look at future innovative solutions like fiber pouches we’ve had challenges with thebarrier properties. I saw a question in the chat too speaking to you know barrier property challenges with food.Um and so understanding what’s available in the market is important but that means we have to work really closelywith our quality team. We also want our retailers to love our products and if we change our packagingsize this changes their shelf. So we need to get input from sales. We want happy consumers. We recentlyremoved um a plastic scoop from one of our powders and we started getting complaints. So, we’re re-evaluatingthis, but it’s really important that consumer relations is a key partner. Some new packaging materials or refillmodels that we’ve evaluated haven’t worked out from a financial perspective. Um, so we’re working closely withfinance to understand those implications. And then lastly, understanding what’s available andwhat’s possible. Um, so we need to engage with our co-manufacturers and suppliers.So, those are some examples internally. And then the last piece I just wanted to address was around tunnel vision. Ithink it’s important that we don’t only focus on the EPR regulation which for us is evaluating recyclability and plasticreduction but also looking at other impact categories like Brit mentioned around emissions. So our glass bottlescontribute to our external emissions. And although the PCR aspect is includedin some regulation, glass itself is not included in the EPR laws. But there’s still areas for us to improve. Someoneon our manufacturing team recently highlighted an opportunity here and if we were solely focused on EPR we’d missthis. So I think overall internal alignment can be hard but understandingwhat motivates key stakeholders taking our time to assess all the optionsengaging cross functionally and keeping all improvements in focus not just thoseimpacted by EPR um are key. Great. And and Brit, how about atStonyfield? I mean, some in the audience may think, oh, they’ll sign off on anything, but how do you uh get, youknow, oh, if it’s green, it’s good. Uh, but how how is it worked for you in terms of uh getting internal alignmentfor some of these efforts? Well, I wish it were that easy. It isnot. Um but to to us some of the key things that help us continue to moveforward on this work are one to have a clearly articulated strategy thateveryone understands and agrees upon. So starting you know we start with ourpackaging roadmap and we work to keep that roadmap up to date. So we’re going through a process right now to torefresh it and make sure that it’s still current and takes into account existingtechnical constraints and things like that. And um alongside that we make sure that we have really strong leadership buyininto that strategy. So packaging is one of the key pillars of Stonyfield’s overall mission strategy and ourleadership is very engaged in understanding how are we performing against those pillars and what are theobstacles that need to be addressed inside the business etc. Um but then youknow beyond that it really comes down to having good crossf functionalcollaboration because packaging touches so many different parts of amanufacturing and consumerf facing business. So we have the marketing team which is engaged in the look and feel ofthe package and making sure that it’s consistent with the the brand image that we want to project. We have R&D workingon helping us identify which packing mi materials we could use that would help advance us towards our goals. But thenwe have the purchasing team who decides whether or not we can spend the money on that material that R&D may haveidentified for us. Right? Then we have the industrial team which is looking atcan they run these materials in the plant? Do they need to modify an existing line? If they do, can theyschedule the downtime to to make those modifications? And then we have the qualityconsiderations around, you know, how does this packaging format impact the consumer experience? Does it impact thefreshness of the or the shelf life of the product? Are we getting more consumer complaints from the uh newpackaging format? And you can see how at any one of these points it’s possible tohave a breakdown that prevents you from getting a new packaging format tomarket. And so we have a cross functional working group. that meets on a quarterly basis. And it’s just theplace where we make sure we’re surfacing all of these issues so that we can getto internal alignment to keep projects advancing and get new projects in thepipeline moving forward because it does just it create it requires that level oforchestration. Great. Thanks. Uh Cheryl, I’ve got aquestion for you. Um, I know, you know, we’ve seen in the past, uh, electronicsrecycling, you know, we’d love to have a unified federal regulation, butunfortunately that hasn’t happened. And it seems like we’re going down the same pathway with EPR laws. So, how arecompanies navigating the patchwork of different EPR laws in the United States?Yeah, it’s definitely on people’s mind as now we have seven states with pastlaws um and three are very actively rolling out. So first and foremost Imentioned the pro the producer responsibility organizations circular action alliance or CAA companies need tobe registered and actively keeping up to date with what CIA is providing becausethey’re you know working to find ways to harmonize and simplify much of this workfor companies and they’re essential resource for much of what’s going on. Umbut you know it’s still the responsibility of the company to make sure that the company knows what theirown legal obligations are. And so what a lot of companies are doing are buildinguh teams that are crossfunctional that um you know bring together you know asyou heard from Stacas sustainability can’t do it all. you know there’s other folks that are involved like regulatoryand legal certainly packaging R&D and others um have different roles to playwith this. So identifying, you know, a single point person that is overseeing ateam that brings together this group to help make sure that the organization’sstaying up to date, making decisions about, you know, what they need to do tocomply with whichever state or law and just keep that engagement going um overa period of time has been. So a team has been one of these things that has been quite helpful for a lot of companies.And then as we’ve been talking about today, you know, thinking about this more from a strategic opportunity lensinstead of strictly a compliance lens because EPR is focused largely right nowon um end of life or managing the packaging after it’s been used. Soreuse, recycling, um composting, looking a bit at source reduction and uhrecycled content. um SA mentioned and um Brit mentioned you know carbon um butalso what about deforestation and nature and there’s laws on those things too. So being sure you know thinking about thisfrom a strategic perspective helps make sure that while compliance is happeningthere are opportunities or tradeoffs you know being thought about um without youknow regrettable you know substitutions or decisions along the way. So having that bigger picture or strategy in minduh is one of the key ways that companies have been able to manage not just this patchwork or you know all thesedifferent states requirements um but also keeping out ahead of them andthinking about the broader aims the organization has too. Great. And I’m going to stick with youfor uh this next question we have. So, does EPR affect raw material supplierslike a manufacturer of PE pellets or is regulation limited to end materialmanufacturers, someone who makes a plastic packaged consumer good?Yeah, I think Dave touched on this briefly and maybe can can add to what I start off with. Um, so each state hasits own definition of who the responsible producer is. So, it’simportant that a company does take a look to figure out if they’re the producer for that state for thematerials that they’re involved in. But typically, it’s the company that’s introducing the packaging into themarketplace um where the consumer is interfacing with it or where it’s beingutilized in the state. So, it could be within a distribution, a warehouse um center um but most typically we’retalking about packaging that the consumer has to manage in the end. Um, so there is some B2B or businesstobusiness packaging and scope. Um, but there’s also mostly uh consumer uhpackaging and scope. So when it comes to raw material uh suppliers, typically they’re not the ones needing to reportthe data and pay the fees. Uh it would be someone downstream of them that isgot the legal obligations. But what we’re finding is clearly there’s a supply chain impact uh to that gets tothe raw material producers because packages are being you know first of allthere’s data being asked for of the supply chain to be able to report but then there’s also packaging changes thatare going to be expected and so that ultimately while not a legal uh uh obligation certainly a potential impact.I don’t know if Dave wants to add to that from his angle. I think that was a a good explanation.That’s been our experience too. So, uh, boy, so many good questions. Um,so Dave, maybe maybe this is for you. Is there is there a standard process toprove out the recyclability of packaging? If the state were to audit a company, what what should the company beprepared with to show their due diligence for designing for recyclability?Typically, you have a a couple of hurdles when you’re talking about recyclability. For design forrecyclability, the best guidelines are typically the ones that come from APR, the Associationof Plastics Recyclers. I think Cecia mentioned that um she worked on onlabels that were you know recognized by the the APR as being recyclable. Sothat’s a pretty good place to start. Depending on how the regulations are written, recyclability may also be afunction of whether packages are collected in a certain state or or region um to to determine if they’rerecyclable or not. I like to believe that with EPR and the amount of of money that’s going to be flowing in with fees,we will be able to influence CAA and the state to put more infrastructure in place and we’ll see more collection inthe future for packages that are welld designed and can absolutely be recycled.But the MURFs that we have in place today in many states are just not set up to collect and recycle them u becausethe economics didn’t work. Now we can make the economics work with the additional fees that are being collected. And we’ll hopefully see thedefinition of what is recyclable expand and shift over time to take into accountnot only the design but the fact that that we have the infrastructure in place to recycle things like flexiblepackaging which you know is typically not collected and recycled in most places.Well, yeah. So, that brings me to the next question and and maybe Brit, I’ll start with you. Is is you talked abouthaving to uh manage multiple stakeholders. Is is there a way in which you’rereaching out to MURFs to try and influence them or is it purely going to be an economic uh lesson for them tostart uh recycling products that they aren’t doing today?It’s a great question and honestly we have so far been focused on getting thisnew pouch format into our industrial system and you know seeing how we cangrow it across the entire pouch line. But we know that reaching out to MURFsand trying to work with external organizations to identify how we need tomake this improvement to recite recycling infrastructure is is on our radar. It’s it’s next on the list, butit’s not a thing that we have gotten to yet. And I really do hope that thisincreased funding coming through EPR programs could be an entry point forwardstarting to have some more productive action on that side of things.Great. Um, anything to add to that, Staca? In terms of mega foods, have you considered this or are there otherorganizations that you’re working with that help try to influence the MURFs?Yeah. Um, so Megapood is similar to Stonyfield in that yes, we understand it’s important and I think everybody’sadvocacy efforts are so different. So, you know, whether you’re engaging in um,you know, accessible uh, access to nutrition or organic farming or, youknow, another pillar would be around packaging. I know of a number of other brands that are doing great work here.I’m part of a sustainability group. I know there’s a lot of stakeholders that you know their advocacy focus isengaging in MERS. That’s not one that we’ve taken on yet just because we’re really trying to make our internalimprovements happen. Um but definitely very important and a next step.Okay, I’m going to stay with you and uh just want to ask, you know, uhsustainability programs rely on data and someone asked here, isn’t all this datajust in your ERP system and you just like pressed a button and got everything you needed to focus on your program?I wish it was that easy. Um for us, packaging data is extremely difficult.So if you think about um all of the specs for every component of piece of packaging, so we have a bottle, we havea cap, there’s rayon, there’s a label, we make in-house products and also rely on co-man. So then for every co-man weneed to gather these specs. Um then we make the calculations using sales data and spec data to understand we have toknow what each state is requesting of us to then submit it. So that piece alone is a lot of data collection. And then ifyou think about all the other places where you have to capture data. So you know when we talked about working with peer strategies doing our road mappingevery year we’re providing them data um on what plastic we’re using and sellingand putting into the world. Um we also use the how to recycle logo and so forthat we have to submit specific data to make sure that we know and the consumer knows what to do with the package at theend of its life. So there’s a number of different places where we’re submitting data and you know making sure you havesystems in place to support it is important something we’re also working to improve and then also just the crossfunctionality of packaging like Brit mentioned you know who owns the database is it a packaging engineer is it asustainability individual is it regulatory right so I think I wish it was that easy but data is complicatedI would love to jump in oh sorry I’d love to jump in on that if I could. I think, you know, this is allpretty new for companies that are going through this and because it’s happeningon a state-by-state basis, it makes it that much more complex for companies tofigure out their compliance. So, it’s I think we’re all on a learning curvehere, and we’d all love to have it just tied in with our finance uh purchasingsystems, but it’s um not quite there yet.So that brings up a question for you, Cheryl. I mean, we’re we’re only talking about two states now, but I’m sureyou’re tracking more than that. What what sort of trends do you see in thecoming next uh let’s say 18 to 24 months for people to start thinking about?Well, I think uh you know, we’re sort of at seven states that have passed EPR. more are um going through the process ofeval, you know, potentially passing laws. So, the number of states could potentially grow. Um for the states thathave passed laws, we’re going to be seeing those being implemented over the next couple years. Um so, we’re going tobe adding. So, we have Oregon, Colorado, um California, um Maine’s going to becoming on, then Minnesota, and Maryland, and Washington. Um so those are thestates with past laws. So all of those will be growing I think because you knowso we talked about you know the complexity of multiple states having their own laws. Um they are rolling outa bit staggered. Um so it’s not like all at once and the different states are so different. There is an opportunity tosee a bit of harmonization or simplification happening with the way those laws get implemented. So while umyou know multiple states will be coming on board, it’s more likely that they’ll be more similar to other states thandifferent to the other states. So hopefully it’ll be a little bit easier to navigate um in the future as morestates come on. Um don’t know like for sure, but that’s the current trend isthat they’re more similar than different uh as more states come on. So hopefully that trend will continue. Um the otherthing is it should get easier. I think companies are um learning you know the first time or two it’s a process ofdiscovery like I described it’s what what are we have to report against wheredoes that data even come from um and how are we going to manage the calculations to report to those things so um thatwhole process is going to become more automatic and accessible uh forcompanies to manage and so then more time will be spent on on innovation andum on you know managing through those packaging changes that are going to be happening. So you I think that the pollwas pretty revealing of where the future will probably be and that’s going to be um a lot of innovation in our future andI just would add I think the exciting thing about EPR is not just that that was a tough answer but that we’retalking about scale we were talking about all you know the the US you know there’s right now there’s very fewcompanies that are just so regionally focused like you know some retailers are but most product manufacturers as we’retalking to today have already had to work uh on EPR through Oregon, Colorado.Um and so this is just a huge scale of of companies that are going to be umworking on this issue. So I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of shift in the market in terms of towards sustainablepackaging. Fantastic. Okay, 30 seconds each.Starting with you, Dave. What’s your one tip for everyone as they start on their EPR journey?um not not only does it require um crossf functional collaboration your companies think and be intentional aboutwho pays the EPR fees and where it sits on your P&L because that will drive good decision makingwhat’s your one piece of advice Dave really took the words right out of my mouth communicate communicatecommunicate across your company all right Stacayeah I’d say make sure that everybody is well informed but also for those in sustainability that are struggling um togive the business case you know use it as another reason why why engage in sustainable packaging well you know inmany ways you’re being forced to so it’s just another good reason reason why to engageright Cheryl last word agree with all of that and maybe just to build you know off of this being anopportunity um you know with the business case uh you know It’s certainly an opportunityto think differently. Um I think someone had a question about reusable packaging. There’s a lot of ways to really open upum the playing field and think about um how sustainable packaging will look different a couple years from now.Fantastic. Well, that’s all the time we have today. Thanks to all of ourspeakers for a great conversation. If you’d like to rewatch this webinar, therecording will be archived on trellis.net net and our team will email you the link once it’s available latertoday. You can also check out the resources on this topic by clicking on the resources button on your screen.This includes all the webinar slides you saw a uh pure strategies reportrealizing sustainable packaging and then a couple of items from Stonyfield a casestudy as well as a how-to guide. Lastly, if you’d like to watch moreTrellis webinars, please visit us at www.trellis.net/webinars.And on behalf of my colleagues at Trellis and our speakers today, thanks so much for joining us. I’m John Davies.Until next time, have a great day.