Here’s a hypothetical for you: Imagine a world where all of the packaging you used on a daily basis was reusable. Not just coffee cups or food containers, but everything from your dish soap to your shampoo. It’s hard to imagine, sure, but the environmental benefits would be profound, right? 

This hypothetical isn’t actually about reuse though, because reuse isn’t the only route forward for sustainable packaging. This hypothetical is about scale — the scale of change across solutions that we need to achieve a truly circular packaging economy.

We all know that the stakes — the connection between packaging and carbon emissions, the global waste crisis, natural resource depletion — are high. We’ll need to make big changes to meet these challenges, so what can we do? 

We can take big swings. 

At SPC Engage, international sustainability experts came together to discuss the big swings our industry can take to drive sweeping, scalable sustainable packaging change. Let’s explore three of these potential solutions.

1. Packaging Reduction: Lessons from Amazon’s Head of European Sustainable Packaging

During SPC Engage, we heard from Amazon’s Head of Sustainable Packaging Europe Thais Blumer on what the company is doing to harmonize its sustainable packaging across borders. Their efforts start with a simple but powerful solution: reduction. 

“Our first priority is actually to avoid packaging,” Thais said. “If the product comes in a package that is strong enough to withstand our fulfillment network, we don’t want to add packaging.”

Since 2015, Amazon has championed SIPP (Ship in Product Packaging), a program meant to reduce unnecessary packaging. Partnerships, like those with suppliers such as Hasbro or Pampers, have been key to the SIPP program’s success. According to Thais, the initiative — in tandem with other packaging reduction efforts — has reduced the average weight of Amazon’s outbound packaging per shipment by 43% and avoided over 3 million metric tons of packaging material. 

So what can you take away from this? Depending on your role in the supply chain, you can find the partnership, the component, or the right-sized container to reduce unnecessary packaging. 

2. Reusable Packaging: Harmonizing Product Categories with Reuse Potential

It’s no secret that reusable packaging initiatives have seldom made it past their pilots. At SPC Engage, Systemiq’s Julia Koskella sat down with SPC Director Olga Kachook to identify challenges with reuse and solutions we can champion to capitalize on the practice’s potential. 

First, the challenges: Julia outlined that the disparate co-filling and washing standards paired with consumer behavior hurdles create significant barriers to scaling reuse. After years of small-scale pilots, we know that if there’s a reuse revolution coming, it won’t happen overnight. Brands can start by identifying the best categories for reuse.

“There needs to first be a realization that we’re not talking about reuse for everything,” SPC Director Olga Kachook said. “There really are some specific areas where reuse makes the most sense.”

What can you do? Look to your portfolio to find the best product fits for reuse, or check out our “Framework for Scaling Reuse” resource for comprehensive guidance on the topic. 

3. Standardized Design: Swapping Variation for Sustainability

For consumers, packaging with multimaterial components or multilayered films has made recycling more complicated. Standardizing packaging formats could help mitigate this by making all disposal decisions as simple as recycling bottles and cans. 

During SPC Engage, experts Feliks Bezati and Erica Ording joined Olga Kachook to discuss the potential in standardized packaging. All parties agreed: scaling standardized packaging would require more than a big swing — it would require sweeping investments, recycling infrastructure enhancements, and large-scale design collaboration. 

Erica used transparent plastics as an example: “What I understand from recyclers is that transparent plastic is one of the most difficult things to maintain… if you would align and say, well, maybe we should pick a pigment that’s not harmful for recycling.” 

Together, the speakers pointed out that the packaging design decisions we make today could last us for the next decade, so where do we go from here? Check out Olga’s article making the case for standardization in packaging design.