SPC Impact 2020

Kickstart your morning with breakfast in the Grand Ballroom where PepsiCo will be showcasing some of their food breakfast items!

9:45 – 10:00 am | Purposefully Recycling: Rethinking Traditional Systems

Many major brands now have sustainable packaging goals. But how will they meet them? Current recycling systems have limitations. When people think “recycling” and “recycled content,” their first thought is about traditional, mechanical recycling. It’s time to move out of the past and into the modern age of chemical recycling. This move requires a change to technology, transportation, and logistics systems so that the materials going to landfill — or the environment — actually get to chemical recycling facilities. Eastman’s CTO will speak about how the company is tackling these issues right now, along with the processes and materials needed to help major brands innovate packaging materials and meet sustainability goals, sharing real-world examples.

Steve Crawford, Senior Vice President, Chief Technology & Sustainability Officer, Eastman Chemical Company

10:00 – 10:15 am | Digital Printing’s Role in Sustainable Packaging

Hear ePac Flexible Packaging discuss sustainability advantages available through digital printing. From energy consumption and ozone emissions to waste reduction, digital printing processes. Among the advantages that digital printing presents, is also the ability to use a digitally-based solution to bypass MURFs while rewarding brands and consumers for sustainable behavior.

Carl Joachim, CMO, ePac Flexible Packaging

Sustainable packaging considerations have spread far and wide from the ground zero of fast-moving consumer goods, and as the movement has expanded to find relevance with nearly every product sector, there are important lessons to be learned. This session focuses on the unique perspective of the fashion and apparel industry and its special set of challenges and opportunities. Hear from several experts who are tackling sustainable packaging and learn what drives their goals, strategies, and ways of thinking.

Technology is already transforming the way we understand and can have a meaningful impact on fighting climate change. Part of this work is a better understanding of our forests and we can leverage these incredible tools and insights that advances in technology affords us. For packaging professionals, this means understanding a key source material in a new way and using this knowledge to help meet sustainability goals.

The 2020 Zero Deforestation Commitments: An Update from the Consumer Goods Forum on the progress and actions towards these commitments

Packaging in the produce aisle has an important job of protecting the product throughout the supply chain all the way from farms and manufacturing plants to the shelf and ultimately the consumers’ table. Most importantly, it has the huge job of preventing food waste. With recent consumer hyper awareness in used plastic packaging, this is an area where plastic packaging has come into question. In this session, we will hear from food manufacturers, packaging converters, key stakeholders and retailers on a balanced approach and on their role in deploying packaging innovations in this sector. 

2:00 – 2:15 pm | Getting Started with Goal Setting

Has your company set packaging goals? Are you drafting goals, and want to know how to set yourself up for success? In this short introduction to goal setting, we’ll look at the specific elements of goals and how they differ from public commitments. We’ll explore some of the key motivations for creating public and internal goals, as well as regional and global goals. We’ll also share some of today’s most important regulatory and voluntary frameworks related to goal setting.

Olga Kachook, Project Manager SPC, GreenBlue

2:15 – 2:45 pm | Turning Packaging Sustainability Goals Into Reality

In response to consumer demand and regulatory trends, companies are increasingly relying on packaging departments to lead the charge on sustainability. With 86 percent of companies on the S&P 500 publishing sustainability reports in 2018, there’s pressure to define and report progress on packaging sustainability goals. However, many packaging departments don’t have the DNA-level data needed to take action. In fact, most companies still manage specifications through email, spreadsheets, or outdated systems. This results in limited visibility into sourcing for packaging departments and presents a huge hurdle for moving forward on goals like recycled or bio-based content.
In this session, you’ll learn how packaging departments can put together an actionable plan to benchmark, take action, and report on sustainability progress to turn packaging sustainability goals into reality. You’ll also learn why technology will become the new norm when it comes to achieving and reporting on sustainability goals.

Matthew Right, Founder & CEO, Specright

Technologies that can transform plastic packaging back into virgin-like plastics and other upstream materials will likely need partnership from incumbent petrochemical companies to grow and scale. These partnerships and offtake agreements are key to finding investors and ensuring that we can return plastic waste into material supply chains. Petrochemical companies are just beginning to demonstrate their commitments to more circular supply chains. This session will explore how these partnerships are getting done, through case examples. Participants will discuss: how they’ve collaborated on technology development and process/pre-process improvements, how much investment / alignment was needed to execute the partnership, and what the potential is for a technology and new source of feedstock to make its way into the traditional plastics supply chain.

Inks, adhesives and coatings play an important role in packaging: they dress, serve as vehicle to convey a message and identity, and add functionality and elements of performance for diverse applications. They also play a significant role in elevating a package’s fate in terms of recovery. An increased recyclability and a decrease in environmental impacts and material health issues are key factors taken into consideration and key stakeholders at the forefront of innovation in the space will share their latest projects as well as how they see their role as part of packaging sustainability.

What is the current landscape for plastic film packaging policy? How does policy impact an existing and growing recovery system? How do you avoid unintended consequences? How can policy help recycling systems? Bans, taxes, fees, regulation, recycling and residents — when talking about policy and packaging, it can raise more questions than can be answered in 280 characters or less. These experts from across the value chain will dig into these questions and more.

Ana will share the experience on The Agave Project and The Heineken Barley Cup project where BioSolutions is harnessing agave bagasse, a byproduct of the Tequila industry, and barley husk, a byproduct of the beer industry to create biomaterials that can be re-used by consumers in these industries through circular economy processes

In an effort to educate and continually push forward sustainability and its impact on consumer package goods, Quad has cowritten multiple studies to understand consumers relationship with sustainable packaging.
In the most recent and third iteration of the study, the same logo and education sheet were used, but two new variables were added; the faux products in studies one and two were swapped out for well-known national brands and a coupon was added that incentivized consumers to consider different products not in the study that highlighted sustainability.
The data from this new study will be revealed at SPC Impact in Austin, TX and will provide insight if national brand awareness and sustainability has any bearing on the consumer.

This interview-style session will be centered around the newer generation entering the sustainable packaging and packaging industries: their insights on leveraging their passion for sustainability, on how to become a change agent in your organization and the greater packaging industry and how to balance putting your ideas forward, building a network and gaining credibility as a leader in sustainable forward thinking. Panelists will also discuss how to balance personal goals with the business’ bottom line and objectives. These ideas and experiences center around being the best at what you do now, finding a champion/mentor within your organization, and being adaptable to the industry’s long term goals.

It’s no secret that food waste has environmental, economical, and even ethical consequences. But those costly realities have taken a backseat to a growing global concern about plastics waste. Food retailers are scrambling to meet the increasing consumer demand for more sustainable packaging, but they are struggling to find solutions that won’t increase their costs or their carbon footprint. Tough decisions need to be made, but how can retailers know they’re making the right ones? Market insight expert Heather Goodman will share recent highlights from research conducted with consumers, retailers, and food brands – all of whom have passionate opinions (and some contradicting perceptions) about food packaging. These surveys reveal which sustainability trade-offs consumers are prepared to accept, which ones are deal breakers, and which ones they are unknowingly ignoring.

Recycled content standards need to evolve with the expansion of new technologies such as chemical recycling. We are entering an era where plastic is not always plastic and tracing materials at the molecular level adds complexity to manufacturing supply chains. In this session we will discuss innovative approaches such as GreenBlue’s Recycled Material Standard (RMS) and EMF’s recent white paper on mass balance approaches to track material flows. Attendees will get an overview of the different approaches and practical real-world application from several perspectives. Panelists will discuss the different approaches and implications for brands, packaging manufacturers, petrochemical companies, and recyclers.

In this session attendees will learn the role that business intelligence and data analytics to assess their entire packaging portfolio, along with production and sales data to get valuable insights to increase their projects’ impact.
Participants will leave this session with insights on:

• How does your package perform against weight and volume efficiency metrics?
• How much package waste is being created in your business?
• Where are the opportunities for maximum improvements?
• How to achieve efficiencies in material usage?
• Which sustainable packaging strategies make the most sense for your company?

This presentation will provide an overview to the then-to-be-newly released Guide to Future Recyclability for How2Recycle, that outlines how How2Recycle members can think about the future recyclability of their tougher-to-recycle packages. Topics will include what to keep in mind and expect if you want your packaging to become more recyclable, what are the steps on the path to get a better How2Recycle label, and commonly encountered challenges for companies on these journeys.

3:00 – 3:15 pm | Film to Film Recovery, Recycling and Production

With the ever increasing need to recycle more film into film based products, Revolution shares their efforts on being both a recycler and manufacturer. This presentation will outline how they have been able to do it and what the future looks like.

Cherish Miller, Vice President Marketing & Sustainability, Revolution

3:15 – 3:30 pm | Challenges on End Use Markets for Low Value Film

In this presentation we will discuss the sources of low value film and the current challenges with recycling as well as present and future end use applications.

Brian Gaughan, EVP Business Development, IntegriCo

3:30 – 3:45 pm | Thinking Outside the Circle.. Creating Novel Materials and Bigger Markets for Post-Use Plastics Through Chemical Recycling

A single-use plastic (SUP) bag has an estimated lifespan of 12 minutes. A full circle can potentially be created by mechanically recycling that discarded plastic bag to make another film product. If successful, another 12 or 20 minutes of usefulness can be derived from the resource. The circle achieved by traditionally recycling film has stringent quality requirements and can typically be completed a limited number of times before plastic quality is diminished and insufficient for further processing. What if we could expand the useful lifespan discarded films and other discarded SUP items to 20 years instead of 20 minutes? The novel chemical recycling technology designed by GreenMantra does exactly that. This technology takes advantage of the integrity of the plastic molecule to create new high-value materials that are used as performance additives in various industrial applications. Some of the largest use cases are in construction infrastructure applications that have useful lifespans of 20-50 years.

Christy Sapp, Global Market Development Director, GreenMantra Technologies Ltd.

Learn how Austin is helping businesses give byproducts a second life through entrepreneurship, through two Austin original program contributing to the City’s zero waste efforts: [Re]Verse Pitch and Materials Marketplace. [Re]Verse Pitch is a social entrepreneurship competition, where businesses take the stage to pitch their byproduct materials to local entrepreneurs, who then have 6-8 weeks to create a new business model using those surplus materials. Hear from competition organizers, City of Austin and Materials Marketplace and from competition organizers and past winners, re:3D and Polysmart. See what it takes to create a winning idea with “waste,” and how to bring a ‘Reverse Pitch’ to your community. 

Demand for the highest quality of recycled plastics is growing as brands’ commitments to use recycled content start to hit their supply chains. This trend is clearest for PET. Significant investments are being made in decomposition technologies that have the potential to create virgin-like PET from low-grade post-consumer material. We’ll hear from a brand owner, a PET producer, and technology providers about their progress and forecast for the future of rPET, and the role that advanced technologies play among current mechanical recycling infrastructure.

Flexible packaging markets continue to grow across a wide range of product categories. But is the effort to recycle and find the next markets for these materials keeping up? Film and flexible packaging materials pose unique challenges. Brands love the features and benefits – consumers love the convenience– but very few Material Recovery Facilities (MRF’s) can sort or find markets for film. Join this panel session to hear how industry leaders are connecting the dots and developing sustainable solutions. Learn about sourcing strategies, the latest in technology for recyclable pouches, and new solutions using recycled content in multi-layered structures.

A number of high profile reusable packaging solutions and programs have been deployed in the last year. In this session leading groups at the forefront of these initiatives will discuss the learnings, challenges, consumers’ acceptance and what in their perspective, will be the tipping point for mainstream implementation.

Kelly Cramer, lead of the How2Recycle program, will lead a panel on Targeting the Tube, exploring how the plastic tube could be an emblem for multiple packaging formats. In this session attendees will learn more about the research and recent packaging innovation to increase recyclability of tubes as well as the changes needed in collection, sortation, and recovery to enable a path to recyclability.

Join us for a Happy Hour sponsored by PreZero!

Stimulate your senses at Still Austin Distillery for an evening of whiskey tasting and small bites hosted by UPM Raflatac! Still Austin CEO/co-founder Chris Seals will give a brief talk to mixer attendees about their sustainability journey at the distillery. Still is a homegrown grain-to-glass distillery in the heart of Austin, which uses only Texas-grown grains. They are a ragtag collection of whiskey obsessives, gin enthusiasts, sustainability wonks, and good friends who nerd out about the theory of élevage and heirloom grain varieties. After distillation, they send the spent grains back to the farmers to feed their livestock and amend their soil—bringing the entire process full-circle and back to its origins. 

Transportation will be provided from AT&T Hotel & Convention center to Still Austin – the bus will leave the hotel promptly at 6:10 pm. At the end of the mixer, feel free to make your way back to the AT&T Hotel & Conference Center, or stick around and explore some of the other Austin hot spots next door! 

You may only add ONE Wednesday evening activity to your registration.

We invite you to travel back in time at the famous Scholz Beer Garten for our mixer hosted by Quad! Scholz is the oldest restaurant and live music venue in Texas. Established in 1866, they’ve been serving the Austin community for almost a century and a half. Over the years it has grown with the Austin community, from hosting a celebration for the University of Texas football team’s first undefeated season in 1893 to being honored by the 1966 Texas legislature with House Resolution #68, which recognized Scholz Garten as “a gathering place for Texans of discernment, taste, culture, erudition, epitomizing the finest tradition of magnificent German heritage in our State.” Today Scholz Garten remains a favorite spot for UT fans, music lovers, and families to enjoy traditional German food, raise their glasses and say Prost! 

Please click “Reserve” to request a mixer pass if you would like join us at this traditional German hot spot with a Texas twist!

*Competitors will not be allowed to join this evening mixer.

Join us at Hotel Ella, an Austin architectural icon, for a classic evening mixer hosted by American Chemistry Council! Located in downtown Austin and walking distance to the University of Texas campus, Hotel Ella is a stylish boutique hotel housed in the historic Goodall Wooten House, one of Austin’s original landmark estates. Constructed in 1900, the Greek revival-style mansion underwent an extensive renovation in 2013, and now offers the perfect balance between modernity and a rich history rooted in the fabric of the neighborhood and the university. Hotel Ella features beautifully designed outdoor and indoor spaces including 47 guest rooms, a cabana-lined pool, and a wrap-around veranda overlooking the front lawn. 

You may only add ONE Wednesday evening activity to your registration. 

In this session we will learn how the landscape for recycling, recovery infrastructure and organics and composting infrastructure looks like in Texas; the success stories, case studies and challenges at the state, regional and local level and what brands and retailers need to consider about their packages recovery in the region.

Sustainable Packaging expectations, solutions and goals are evolving from concepts such as optimization, design for recyclability, renewable materials and recycled content to packaging that is designed to be net neutral or carbon positive. In this session, system changing programs will be showcased, as well as new concepts of what these forward thinking concepts mean.

Join the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, The Recycling Partnership, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, and the World Wildlife Fund in this important half-day workshop designed to refine and reinforce the foundational plans of the U.S. Plastics Pact. Learn about the Plastics Pact network and how the ideals of the New Plastic Economy can be applied to the unique opportunities and challenges around furthering plastic packaging circularity within the U.S.. Bring your ideas and prepare to think big as you participate in special roundtable discussions around the execution of the U.S. Plastics Pact and the activities needed to achieve high levels of aspiration in bringing the circular economy to life.Participation in this workshop is open to SPC Impact attendees and non-attendees. There is no fee to attend the workshop, but SPC members must register using the code usplasticspact-spcmember and non-members must register using the code usplasticspact-nonmember. If you are already registered to attend SPC Impact and wish to attend this workshop, please email spcinfo@greenblue.org to indicate your plans to participate.

Viral videos, mounting consumer pressure and a growing number of local, state and international actions focused on curbing plastic pollution have positioned this sustainability trend front and center for many companies. But achieving “sustainability” is not a simple question of paper or plastic. In this session, our panelists will discuss the considerations required for plastic replacement, as well as discuss scenarios in which plastic packaging is preferred. We will build off our successful SPC Advance Panel, “Looking for the Paper Option”. Come ready to bust myths, visualize material trade-offs and participate in a lively discussion around material choice and packaging solutions.

In this session we will showcase examples of circular systems in food service packaging formats and materials in terms of their recovery. Speakers will share their perspectives and experiences on the opportunities and challenges when it comes to recovery considerations, such as ease of recovery, contamination, amount of material available, the importance of partnerships, consumer education and building relationships with material recovery facilities.

In this session we will highlight the aspects that have to be considered to determine when a bioplastic is the best materials for your package.

9:40 – 10:00 am | The Impacts of MRF Technology on Packaging Recovery

Packaging is a primary target for recovery from the residential sector. MRF Technology is quickly advancing to aid improved recovery and provide a better understanding of the material stream. Come to this session to get an overview of artificial intelligence and machine learning and how these advancements are positively impacting the recycling industry.

Matt Todd, Senior Consultant, RRS

10:00 – 10:30 am | Designing Recyclable Glass Packaging

Designing recyclable glass packaging Is your product packaging fully recyclable? Learn the best practices to ensure your packaging is easily recycled by consumers. Shrink wrapped versus powder coated? Glass chemistry and labeling is all covered. Understand the myths for recycling and the preferences by the processors to ensure your package is sustainable, recyclable and responsibly designed.

Laura Hennemann, Vice President, Marketing & Communications, Strategic Materials

Forests in Focus has added a number of new features and updates to help companies better understand their regions of sourcing and find conservation opportunities in the very woodbaskets where they source. In this session we will be looking at the brand new Business Intelligence dashboard that allows powerful new insights into over 500 mills and wood baskets in the United States.

If the consumer places a beverage can in the recycling bin and it’s hauled away to the material recovery facility (MRF), one would hope it is not at that point a beverage can is removed from the can’s existing circular system. Unfortunately, there are analyses showing between 1 in 3 and 1 in 6 beverage cans are missorted at the MRF. This could be for a variety of reasons including flattened cans getting mixed in with the paper, cans with shrink sleeve labels getting mistaken for plastic, and all cans not being separated out by an eddy current. Cans are important to appropriately sort because the aluminum in cans is able to be recycled infinitely and also because it is such a valuable material. One study found that cans made up 1% by weight of the recycling stream but 17% of the revenue for a typical MRF. With MRF revenues down around 50 percent post-China’s national sword, that revenue is critical capital MRFs need to continue operating and to invest in what is needed to capture all the cans and also accurately sort the other material types. In this session, we’ll explore how beverage cans can be designed to promote proper sortation, what MRF infrastructure would help with capturing beverage cans, and how capturing more beverage cans is in the MRF’s interest given its relatively high value.

As new investments are being made in the domestic recycling system, it’s imperative that we find methods for better sorting and recovery of different forms of packaging to move to those emerging domestic markets. The Pacific Northwest Secondary Sorting Demonstration Project aimed to test the potential of a regional, secondary sorting model to further recover value from materials leaving material recovery facilities (MRFs), from container line residuals currently heading to landfill as well as mixed plastics, which are currently of no value or negative value in today’s market. In this session, project funders will share learnings from the project and discuss how these findings could shape the future sorting capabilities and expand the range of products recovered for recycling.

Protective packaging is critical to ensure the safe and secure transport of goods. However, there can be significant tradeoffs between performance, economics and sustainability. The SPC’s Protective Packaging Design Challenge invited start-ups, individual or university entrepreneurs to submit their innovations in protective packaging materials and systems that embody excellence in performance as well as other sustainable packaging pillars. This is SPC’s second entrepreneurs challenge, launched in partnership with Ubuntoo. A group of finalists will be selected to join us at SPC Impact and present their winning innovations on stage to event attendees.

Recology has been in the business of collecting, sorting, and reselling discarded materials for nearly a century. The cornerstone of success in the recycling business is the ability to collect clean material to be processed, recovered, and transformed into new products. In general, taxpayers have shouldered much of the cost of recovering consumer goods, showcasing a clear preference for making second use of these materials rather than sending them to landfill. However, over the past few years, global environmental policies have identified packaging (especially single-use plastic packaging) for its role in contaminating and endangering the current recycling system, as well as polluting marine and ocean environments.
Policies and investments in recycling infrastructure are needed to effectively respond to the changing nature of the materials found in the marketplace, and producers and manufacturers of packaging materials have a big role to play. These changes will require creativity, innovation, and most importantly, cooperation.