Knowledge Library
Free SPC Member access to the Knowledge Library. To access courses for free, please follow the link to sign in to your member dashboard.
Explore SPC’s Resources
The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a membership-based collaborative that believes in the power of industry to make packaging more sustainable. Our mission is to bring sustainable packaging stakeholders together to catalyze actionable improvements to packaging systems and lend an authoritative voice on issues related to packaging sustainability. We have curated a diverse collection of resources to help you navigate the realm of sustainable packaging.
Here you can search or filter by topics and resource type to find a wealth of knowledge and practical tools to support your sustainability journey.
Compostable Packaging
Compostable Packaging explores the basics of composting, the current state of composting infrastructure, residential and commercial access, as well as best practices for compostable packaging design, labeling, testing, and certification.
Material Health
Material Health is an overview of how the materials used in packaging can affect human health and the environment, with an emphasis on how companies can take action to choose safer materials.
Sourcing Fiber
The topic highlights the environmental and social considerations for healthy working forests and gives a birds-eye view of the challenges facing fiber procurement today.
Packaging and Food Waste
This topic explores how packaging can be a tool to reduce and prevent food waste, and how packaging alone may not be enough to solve the food waste problem.
Chemical Recycling
Chemical Recycling provides an introductory overview on the technologies that enable re-building virgin quality material from pre-existing plastics.
E-commerce Packaging
E-commerce Packaging explores how to think about retail channels in the context of sustainable packaging. This serves as a comprehensive exploration focusing on definitions, concepts, considerations, and examples.
Reusable Packaging
Reusable Packaging discusses the drivers for reusable packaging, examines the important life cycle considerations for reuse, shares case studies of new models, and provides tools for teams wanting to develop reusable packaging.
Life Cycle Assessments
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) explores how it can be utilized to better understand the environmental impacts of products and packaging, examine the important underlying assumption and limitations of LCA, and share best practices for communicating and using LCA results.
Bioplastics
Bioplastics explores the diverse family of bio-based and biodegradable plastics, covering sourcing and end-of-life considerations. It also explores the standards and certifications that are relevant to bioplastics marketing claims.
Mechanical Recycling
Explore recycling from a bird’s-eye view in this topic so you can better navigate the complexities of designing for recycling and from recycling.
Setting Sustainability Goals
This topic will explore the most important considerations around what makes a good goal, the different kinds of corporate sustainability goals related to packaging that companies are setting, and examine the process for crafting meaningful goals that can help drive change internally and with supply chain partners.
Packaging and Sustainability
This topic examines big questions related to sustainability such as systems thinking and circular economy. It also examines how to optimize packaging to be more sustainable, how to design for packaging recovery, and sourcing considerations for sustainable packaging.