It’s been a little while since we talked about packaging, so let’s start with the Bottle Weight Accord’s first birthday. This is the commitment the likes of Accolade Wines, Tesco, The Wine Society, Viña Concha y Toro and, most recently, Albert Heijn, have made to reduce the weight of wine bottles to an average of 420g per 75cl bottle.
Research published by the Sustainable Wine Roundtable, which runs the accord, shows 1.5 billion bottles are now covered by the voluntary agreement (representing 5%-ish of global wine production. The average weight among signatories is now 451.7g, versus the industry standard of 550g. Dropping almost 100g from a glass bottles saves 96gCO2e, which shouldn’t be sniffed at.
Some wine companies (among them McGuigan Wines and Lanchester Wines) are already using bottles weighing just 300g. Many others are testing these. Those with a long memory of such innovation have been chuckling about all the PR that beverage businesses and their packaging suppliers are pulling in with such stories and statistics: because the Glassrite II project run by Wrap had brands and glass manufacturers heading towards the 300g mark… in 2008.
Wrap has been in this game a long time (and produced some long reports, that are heavy on the detail). The charity’s latest research, co-published (with Defra), is more slim-line: a 19-page analysis of recycling infrastructure capacity, including how things might look through to 2035 following the introduction of major packaging reforms – a deposit return scheme (DRS), extended producer responsibility for packaging (pEPR) and simpler collections. The research is designed to help “unlock the investment necessary to support our circular economy ambitions and is intended to act as a visual aid to forecast capacity investment opportunities for end destination process for recyclable materials”, said Mary Creagh, the minister responsible for waste at Defra.
If you’re one for numbers, some of the “capacity investment opportunities” detailed are: 1.7Mt/pa for paper; 1.375Mt/pa for anaerobic digestion; 324kt/pa for plastic; 203kt/pa for metals; and 172kt/pa for glass (all assuming exports remain the same). Whether the already much-relayed DRS and pEPR scheme will have got going by 2035 is anyone’s guess.
Food bosses continue to make threats about pEPR, for example, with the British Retail Consortium and the Wine and Spirits Trade Association calling for delays. They want the fees raised to be ring-fenced, but are also concerned about the costs stacking up and hitting consumers in the pocket. Is not the aim for the producer to pay? Tim Etherington-Judge, founder of Avallen Spirits and Avallen Solutions, a consultancy, has just done a deep dive into pEPR and DRS. When we asked him whether the concerns raised by industry, for example around additional costs, are justified, his answer was simple: “No.”
Sticking with packaging, but moving to Germany, is research by consumer group and accompanying magazine Ökotest whichshowed the chemical BPA (which is subject to broadening bans in food contact materials) and BPS (its not-so-safe substitute) in worrying amounts in pizzas boxes made from recycled cardboard. Only one pizza box, from Pizza Hut, tested negative for both BPA and BPS, reports Food Safety magazine following the tests. A simulation using the 10 tested boxes found chemicals and in the pizzas too – one of which would have given someone a daily dose that exceeds the EFSA one by around 45,000%. “That leaves you speechless,” the group said.
Nestlé also managed to leave a room full of people speechless recently when one of its team said (out loud during a presentation) that without farmers the company was “all Kit and no Kat”. There appears no sign of a break in farmers’ financial fury, mind. “Upland farmers who relied on government promises to adequately pay them for improving the natural environment and tackling climate change have been short changed,” reports 8point9.com. Modelling carried out by the University of Cumbria’s Professor Julia Aglionby shows that many upland farmers in England are now living on less than the national minimum wage. “It’s quite depressing,” Aglionby told the site.
Which brings us to equally-gloomy research published by an international research team that included the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and the University of Sussex. The researchers found the pervasive impact of pesticides reaches 800 species that are not targeted by the chemicals. The effects on biodiversity are “overwhelming”, they said; the findings “question the sustainability of current pesticide use”.
There is more on that study in a separate story this week. We also cover a study in which researchers at the University of Aberdeen revisited their work from 10 years ago on the perceptions around meat, diet and climate change (understanding has improved but many of the barriers to change have remained). And there is news of EIT Food’s latest big ‘trust in food’ survey: very few Europeans are keen to cut back on meat or try regenerative foods, it seems.
