PACKAGING & SUSTAINABILITY

Packaging Sustainability

Enhancing Packaging Sustainability & Transparency

The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry is committed to continuous innovation across packaging and sustainability. This effort includes empowering consumers with the information they seek to understand the potential environmental impact of their purchases. To support this, the industry complies with the current Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) guidelines to protect consumers and foster ongoing innovation, while also encouraging the continuous review of those guidelines to better reflect current consumer demand, provide actionable insights for manufacturers and reflect emerging technologies, like Consumer Brands’ SmartLabel®, as pathways to that continued innovation.

Environmental Marketing Claims

The FTC’s Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (“Green Guides” or “Guides”), a resource that helps guide companies to avoid potentially misleading environmental marketing claims, play a key role in the CPG industry’s commitment to driving innovation in packaging and sustainability by helping consumers make informed choices. The CPG industry champions the modernization of the Green Guides by the FTC to promote clear standards on environmental claims, discouraging consumer deception while promoting competitive business practices and continued innovation with new technology that can shape circularity. As consumer expectations and stakeholder commitments around sustainability have significantly evolved over the past decade, updating the Green Guides to reflect current standards will better serve consumers, provide actionable clarity for industry and ultimately support broader environmental goals.

SmartLabel

SmartLabel, a digital tool created by the CPG industry, empowers consumers to go beyond the product label, driving transparency and helping consumers to make informed decisions about the products they use every day, including their environmental impact.

We know consumers want to recycle, but given the lack of a national standard for recycling and a patchwork of nearly 10,000 independent recycling systems across the country – each with their own set of rules – consumers more than often end up “wishcycling,” or hoping that the packaging they are putting in their recycling will be accepted by their neighborhood recycling facility.

With the integration of innovative new recycling tools, SmartLabel can eliminate the guesswork by connecting consumers with their local recycling rules.

Through the scan of a QR code used by 1,000 brands on over 100,000 food, beverage, personal care and household products, SmartLabel also helps support CPG companies sustainability goals by making it easier for brands to provide zip-code level packaging recycling instructions to consumers.

SmartLabel does more than just recycling – it’s a one-click digital tool for consumers to learn more about the product. Learn more here.

What We Do

Advocate for a market-based system with transparent rules that differentiate between general environmental marketing claims and consumer focused recycling instructions.

Educate lawmakers on the fundamental role the CPG industry plays in improving recycling rates and the importance of collaborative recycling technologies such as mechanical and molecular recycling, to achieve circularity.

Champion the formal regulatory review of the FTC Green Guides to reflect its importance as a framework on how to appropriately validate truthful environmental claims while encouraging continued innovation.

Consumer Brands SVP of Packaging and Sustainability Talks Molecular Recycling, Navigating Marketing and Recycling Instructions and More