In Perspective

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Influencing the Palm Oil Industry

May 14, 2010 in Consumers, In Perspective by admin | No comments

The other day someone asked in response to my story on the “Trailblazers for Good” blog on Care2.com whether or not I would consider influencing and bringing about change in the palm oil industry? Well, the quick and high-level answer is yes – this has been my intention from the beginning – to create change in the industry by helping to create positive role models and economically viable alternatives for the disposal of palm waste. We recently had a discussion with a large palm oil plantation company in Malaysia and they agree that our company “represented the future of the industry.”

We became one of the early members of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), have volunteered to get a third party review done and verification to ensure the ethical sourcing of our raw palm fiber material, and continue to work with our supplier plantation to make improvements, measuring ourselves against the guidelines of the RSPO among others. And it really goes further than this.

After living in South East Asia for 15 years and returning to Canada, I was looking to develop a business concept that would allow me to not only address and help contribute to the sustainable development of the palm oil industry and a better quality of life and working conditions for those affected by the incineration of palm waste, but to also find a way to simultaneously address North America’s mounting waste problem, and the environmental and health hazards brought on by plastics. This is how Earthcycle Packaging was born!

Lofty goals? Maybe. But for me it is about aligning my values, passion and skills to affect incremental change in the short-term to hopefully inspire and bring about the necessary transformational change in the future.

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Tags: Earthcycle, Earthcycle Packaging, palm oil, palm oil industry, Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, RSPO

So what about the Palm Oil Industry?

May 12, 2010 in Consumers, In Perspective by admin | No comments

Because our company’s mission is so entwined with the palm oil industry and I have been around the Malaysian palm oil industry for over eight years, I sometimes get questions here in North America about the palm oil industry as a whole and its sustainability.

Here in North America, while we are generally aware of the controversies surrounding the palm oil production, we are largely unfamiliar with the bright orange and red clusters of palm fruit that grow on giant husks – the fruits that are the source for the oil that ends up as an ingredient in a wide range of food and beauty products all over the world. More than 70 percent of palm oil is derived from plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia, with Malaysia being the largest exporter of palm oil, feeding three billion people in over 150 countries.

The palm oil industry as a whole is a substantial part of the global economy, providing vital employment for over 6 million people. Palm oil is also highly efficient—it is eight times more productive per acre than soybean oil, and accounts for roughly a third of the world demand for vegetable oils. Palm oil is trans-fat free and provides many nutritional health benefits including antioxidants and vitamins. As such, it is a main source of calories and nutrition for people in developing nations.

In Malaysia, palm oil plantations make up two-thirds of Malaysia’s agricultural land which is 20 percent of the total land. Rainforests make up 60 percent of the total land. As such, 80 percent of Malaysia is green tree covered which makes it one of the largest carbon sinks in the world. According to the American Palm Oil Council, over the past twenty years, the areas converted for palm cultivation came from pre-existing farms such as rubber, cocoa, and coconut or from agricultural zoned land.

In recent years, the price for palm oil has jumped by 70 percent due to increasing demand from traditional food sources and from new demand for palm oil in the form of biodiesel, which in many cases is being subsidized by western governments. This hunger for palm oil has not only had a major impact on household expenditures in the developing world, but has also threatened the lush, diverse rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra that are home to numerous endangered species, such as orang-utans.

Enter the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). We became one of the early members of this organization. The RSPO is unique in that it brings together groups that would normally be on opposite sides of the table, to define and certify sustainability in the palm oil industry. Members of the RSPO include social and environmental NGO’s (including WWF), grassroots organizations and members along the entire supply chain—plantation owners, millers, traders, retailers and financiers. The RSPO agreed on a set of Principles and Criteria for the Production of Sustainable Palm Oil in 2005, launching the certification system in 2007. It was definitely high time for such an initiative.

Have a look at the CNBC 2008 Story on the palm oil industry challenges and RSPO’s efforts to address them – it’s a worthwhile clip

In addition, here are further sources of interest:

American Palm Oil Council
Wikipedia – Palm Oil
Quick Info on Palm Oil
A healthful Diet can include Palm Oil
Roundtable For Sustainable Palm Oil

RSPO on Sustainable Palm Oil Industry

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Tags: American Palm Oil Council, palm oil, palm oil industry, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, RSPO

Ethical Sourcing of Palm Fiber for Sustainable Packaging

May 7, 2010 in Consumers, Eco-Responsible Packaging, In Perspective by admin | No comments

A few weeks ago I was invited to contribute our Earthcycle story to the “Trailblazers for Good” blog on the Care2.com site. It sparked a variety of interesting comments and questions on the palm oil industry which I will address in this and the next few blog posts. Let’s start with the question of where we source our raw fiber material.

More than 70 percent of palm oil is derived from plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia, where the first palm trees were planted in the 1800’s. Earthcycle’s products are made from a waste product of the palm oil industry. Specifically, our packaging material is a moulded pulp product made from the husks where the palm fruit grows.

Before founding Earthcycle Packaging, I lived in South East Asia for 15 years where I became well aware of the destructive tendencies of industrial agriculture and the impact excessive demand was having on the natural world. It is well known that there are some areas that have been desecrated and we do not condone it – as such, we have veered away from doing business (licensing technology, sourcing raw material) from areas of the world that don’t have a mindset toward sustainability or don’t have the wherewithal to invest in RSPO certification.

We chose our suppliers of palm fiber carefully and also became an early member of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The RSPO is a unique organization, bringing together groups that would normally be on opposite sides of the table, to define and certify sustainability in the palm oil industry. Members of the RSPO include social and environmental NGO’s, grassroots organizations and members along the entire supply chain—plantation owners, millers, traders, retailers and financiers. The RSPO agreed on a set of Principles and Criteria for the Production of Sustainable Palm Oil in 2005, launching the certification system in 2007.

It was important to me to get a third party review done on our Malaysian plantation partners so we commissioned SGS Qualipalm, an authorized auditor for the RSPO to assess our source of palm fiber against the RSPO defined guidelines for land title, High Conservation Value (HCV) areas and agrochemical use.

Based on the SGS Qualipalm report, we can safely say that our partner plantation first planted palm trees in 1976, and has existing legal documentation for land titles and proof of occupation and use. The location is in an area of Peninsular Malaysia where there are no significant High Conservation Value (HCV) forests or wildlife habitats. No orang-utans were lost in development of the plantation since Peninsular Malaysia has not recorded sittings of orang-utans. Sittings of species protected under Malaysian law on the plantation include monitor lizards, barn owls and forest cats. Also, the assessment confirmed that there has been no conversion of Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) to oil palm as per Malaysia’s National Plan. Issues of HCVF are minimal since current activities do not involve clearing of natural areas.

The quest for sustainability is a journey—if we were all perfect, there would be no need for the certification in the first place. So, it is expected that there are areas in the plantation management that need improvement as measured against the RSPO Principles and Criteria.

There is still much work to be done and I’m committed to working with our current and any future partners to help them improve best practices in their operations.

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Tags: palm oil industry; sustainable palm oil production; palm oil plantations; RSPO; Earthcycle; sustainable packaging; SGS Qualipalm

What is Sustainable Packaging?

April 19, 2010 in In Perspective by admin | No comments

Sustainable, eco-friendly, eco-responsible, environmentally sound, green – the list goes on – are the terms we read and hear about on a daily basis in response to various new product innovations. The packaging industry is no exception to using this type of language. But what do all these words really mean? Let’s go with the word sustainable as it seems to be the most common yet most vague of the “green” terms. It is overused and means different things to different people. At the same time, it is hard to avoid, especially for me, being part of a packaging movement that aims to bring about the type of change that might be termed sustainable.

To start with a more fundamental, widely accepted definition of sustainable development, I like Dr. Gordon Robertson’s interpretation of the Brundtland Report definition. He explains that for sustainable development to take place, a balance between economic growth, social development and environmental protection is required – a triple bottom line view. According to his 2009 article, Sustainable Packaging: Does it Really Exist?, Robertson interprets that “sustainable development is the level of human consumption and activity which can continue into the foreseeable future, so that the systems which provide goods and services to humans persist indefinitely.”

So let’s relate this back to the packaging industry. Robertson goes on to criticise some efforts by the industry, namely the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), to find a common ground around the meaning of sustainable packaging – he says according to their definition, no packaging on the market is currently sustainable. But here I argue that we have to start somewhere – and we require a widely accepted guideline to work from. And this is exactly what the Sustainable Packaging Coalition is trying to do. If we want to improve our industry and bring about change to the way we make our packaging, we need a framework like this to direct our activities toward improvement.

According to the SPC then, a package is sustainable if it meets the following criteria:

Is beneficial, safe and healthy for individuals and communities throughout its life cycle;
Meets market criteria for performance and cost;
Is sourced, manufactured, transported, and recycled using renewable energy;
Maximizes the use of renewable or recycled source materials;
Is manufactured using clean production technologies and best practices;
Is made from materials healthy in all probable end of life scenarios;
Is physically designed to optimize materials and energy;
Is effectively recovered and utilized in biological and/or industrial cradle to cradle cycles.

As a designer and distributor of eco-responsible packaging, I can look at these criteria as a progressive challenge and see where we are at and what areas we need to analyze further to make improvements to become truly sustainable according to this definition. I know that we have to make some significant improvements in the area of renewable energy and clean production technologies. But I also know that we are meeting this definition in the other categories. This allows me to speak with more confidence and clarity to my clients as I can show them these criteria among our other standards, such as ASTM D6866, BPI compostable, and Greener Package Database, to explain how we measure our success and compare to our competition.

Additional Resources:

Sustainable Packaging: How do we Define and Measure It?
Greener Package Guidlines
Sustainable Packaging Alliance
Wikipedia: Sustainable Packaging
Wikipedia: Sustainability

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Tags: sustainable, sustainable development, sustainable packaging, Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Benefits of City Composting

April 9, 2010 in Consumers, In Perspective by admin | No comments

In time for Earth Day on April 22, the City of Vancouver announced a new three-phase curbside compost pick-up program for single-family homes. According to the City, phase one will allow families to add their vegetable and fruit scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds and filters to their yard trimming bins. In early 2011, we’re supposed to see this service extended to include all food scraps including meats, fish, dairy, bread, cereal products and food-soiled paper. The compost will be handled by a commercial composting facility, Fraser Richmond Soil & Fibre, which can generate the right amount of heat and moisture to break down this matter appropriately and in a timely manner.

As of yet, this program is unfortunately not available for apartment dwellers, although the City is working on a plan for Metro Vancouver to add collection to multi-family units and businesses. The good news is that there are some private grassroots initiatives starting up in Vancouver that are addressing the commercial composting challenge. Growing City for example started servicing the downtown Vancouver area last year.

There are significant reasons why cities, such as Vancouver, are finally jumping on the composting bandwagon. While composting initially costs more than land-filling, over the long-term, the benefits will outweigh these costs. Organic material from single-family homes in Vancouver makes up over 35 percent of garbage that ends up in our landfill. By diverting it to a local composting facility instead, we can reduce a large source of landfill-generated greenhouse gases, extend the life of our landfill, and generate a valuable resource for the community in the form of premium soil and mulch. What’s more, this industry generates additional jobs, and word has it that Fraser Richmond will also add technology that will allow for the production of renewable energy as of 2011. You can find out more on this through their parent company, Harvest.

Significant municipal infrastructure progress, such as adding new composting plants and programs, is good news for the alternative packaging industry. Such infrastructural change makes it easier to introduce innovative new packaging materials (made from agricultural fibers for example) as alternatives to traditional plastic packaging. It is one thing to find alternatives to plastic packaging, but if the infrastructure isn’t there to support that switch, it is more difficult to promote change.

More resources:

The Province: Vancouver OKs yard composting beginning April 22

Andrea Reimer: Curbside & Neighbourhood Compost Comes to Vancouver!

Granville Online: Curbside compost pickup in Metro Vancouver

Compost Council of Canada

US Composting Council

Natural Resources Defense Council: Keep organics and recyclables out of landfills and incinerators

Wikipedia: Composting

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Tags: alternative packaging, certified home compostable, compost, compost curb-side pickup, Earthcycle, Earthcycle Packaging, Edmonton’s Composting Facility, Fraser Richmond Soil & Fibre, Frito Lay, Growing City, home composting, industrial composting, NatureWorks, PLA, Sun Chips, Vancouver composting

Why Use Packaging in the First Place?

March 26, 2010 in In Perspective by admin | No comments

When I’m at the grocery store check-out till, I often wonder about the courageous customers that place their unprotected lettuce, tomatoes, or apples on the conveyor belt where hundreds of other items, including meats, poultry and fish, and sticky bakery items or dusty cans have already been transferred that day. What’s more, the cashier needs to touch every item and handle the cash in-between. Of course, we have the option of bringing our own reusable produce bags. Either way, it does beg a discussion about the benefits of packaging.

In our business, we come across many individuals that ask us the question, “Why use packaging in the first place?” There is great concern about packaging adding significantly to the overflowing landfills. And it’s true. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2008 report, “Containers and packaging made up the largest portion of municipal solid waste generated in 2007: 31 percent or 78 million tons.”

Fresh produce packaged in Earthcycle

But let’s face it, when it comes to food packaging in particular, our convenience-driven and health conscious society with a growing affinity for portion-sized pre-packaged food cannot and maybe should not do without it. In particular with the recent panic surrounding the H1N1 virus, you want to know your food is wrapped safely from any possible contaminants and from pathogens in the air when it’s displayed in grocery stores.

And let’s not forget, packaging will protect from germs that can transfer from shoppers picking over the produce. Then there’s the damage to consider. In bulk displays, retailers are throwing away anywhere from 15 to 18 percent of produce due to it being picked over and damaged. With packaging, there is only five to eight percent waste at most.

So packaging is not only helpful for our health, but it also assists the retailer with maintenance of product integrity at store shelves and decreases the amount of fresh produce waste that will otherwise end up in landfills. James McWilliams discusses these issues in more detail in his recent New York Times article, “How About Them (Wrapped) Apples?” It is a worthwhile read.

This still leaves us with the overflowing landfills and waterways contaminated by packaging. But there are many packaging alternatives now available, including PLA and agricultural fiber options which are cost competitive with traditional plastics such as PET. Earthcycle is one of them. When we first conceptualized Earthcycle Packaging in 2004, we took the various issues discussed above among many more into consideration and believe that the benefits of packaging in the produce industry far outweigh the negatives.

In this day and age, we do not necessarily have to do without. We have the knowledge and understanding to leverage the design brilliance of nature to come up with the type of products that we have come to depend on without creating more waste or environmental harm in the meantime.

Our Earthcycle packaging, for example, follows the cycle of nature. Our product life cycle starts with a natural renewable resource, palm fiber, from which we mould certified home compostable packaging. Once the packaging has done its job protecting our food, it can be thrown into any compost and will break down within 90 days, returning to the earth as humus and creating valuable nutrients for the soil.

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Tags: agricultural fiber packaging, alternative packaging, compostable packaging, Ear, Earthcycle Packaging, food packaging, home compostable, packaging, palm fiber, pre-packaged food, sustainable packaging

Waste Management at Vancouver 2010 Olympics

March 16, 2010 in In Perspective by admin | No comments

According to a recent article from PricewaterhouseCoopers, VANOC has been the first organizing committee in the history of the Olympic Games to integrate a sustainability management and reporting system into its business plan. It was based on international standards, such as AccountAbility’s AA1000 series, which are “principles-based standards for helping organizations become more accountable, responsible and sustainable.”

Given VANOC’s sustainability definition of “managing the social, economic and environmental impacts and opportunities of [the] Games to produce lasting benefits, locally and globally,” they built sustainability into the games in 12 key areas. You can read the details here.

I wanted to take a closer look at the waste management side of things, and in particular, see what I could find on packaging. The VANOC 2008 to 2009 Sustainability Report states that overall, VANOC managed to divert 67% of their waste by reusing, recycling or composting it – that’s 734.2 metric tonnes of their total solid waste that they were successful in diverting from landfills during this time period. Their target for the actual game period of January 1 to March 31, 2010 was to divert a minimum of 85 percent of their total waste generated from all game operations. It’ll be interesting to see the results once the 2010 Sustainability Report is released.

In adopting Vancouver’s Zero Waste Challenge Strategy, VANOC has had to strategically work with sponsors, product suppliers, contractors and staff in the areas of source reduction, reuse, recycling, waste energy, landfill disposal, and education and communication.

For example, VANOC worked with one of their sponsors, The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), on their packaging. HBC sponsored furniture and linens for the athletes’ village. VANOC says that the waste creation from polystyrene (Styrofoam) packaging would have been high. In addition, there would have been the generation of more traffic, more costs for waste disposal and the creation of greenhouse gas emissions through removal of non-recyclables. So HBC turned around and worked with its suppliers to find alternatives that would be acceptable to VANOC’s waste management policy, such as easily compactable and recyclable cardboard packaging and plastic films. In addition, HBC provided worker uniforms in bulk packaging.

The Hudson’s Bay Company was not the only sponsor who took the challenge seriously. Coke, for example, showcased its commitment to the Zero Waste Challenge and sustainable packaging by presenting its new, fully recyclable “PlantBottle”, using only 100 percent compostable beverage cups and lids, and collecting all PET containers for a 95 percent diversion of waste from landfills. Apparently, the uniforms worn by the Coke reps were made out of recycled PET bottles.

Why The Earthcycle Blog?

November 26, 2009 in In Perspective by earthcyclepackaging | No comments

At Earthcycle we are excited about this new forum that will not only give you more information about our company and why we love what we do, but more importantly, provide you with more information about eco-responsible packaging.

This blog is aimed at you, the consumer, and how the information that we provide to you can help you make wise choices when purchasing food and other products that require packaging.

Let’s face it, in today’s health conscience society – in particular right now with the panic surrounding the H1N1 virus – you want to feel your food is wrapped safely from any possible contaminants as it’s shipped.

That includes from the farm or factory where it’s produced to the supermarket where you buy it, and then into the back of your car alongside your kids, their muddy soccer equipment or even the wet dog. Packaging is important for your health and safety, and at Earthcycle our goal is to make it safe and healthy for the environment too.

Earthcycle’s environmentally responsible packaging is made from a natural and renewable resource, palm fiber, which is left over when the palm fruit is harvested for its oil.

I first came across this use for palm fiber shortly after moving to Malaysia in 1997. My view of the country’s lushness was clouded by plumes of smoke, the result of land clearing and burn-off from the semi-annual palm fruit harvest. Sometimes the smoke was so bad, that schools, airports and ports were closed and residents advised to stay inside.

A few years later I began working with the Malaysian government, which was intent on finding a solution to the problem. One of their ideas was to turn the leftover palm husk fiber, normally bound for a bonfire, into packaging.

I loved the idea, but before I could help make it happen, I needed to move back to Vancouver, Canada for family reasons. Instead of letting the idea fade away, I worked on it in my own backyard, by researching the need for different types of eco-responsible packaging in North America.

By the end of 2004, I obtained the North American exclusive distribution rights for Malaysia’s palm fiber packaging, lined up investors, , a partner factory in Malaysia, a warehouse in Seattle, and an office in Vancouver. In 2005, Earthcycle Packaging Ltd. was born!

Earthcycle packaging is now used by a wide-range of retailers such as Trader Joe’s, Wal-Mart, Wegmans, Aldi’s, Whole Foods, Publix, , Kroger, Sobeys and Loblaws .

At Earthcycle, our goal is to provide smart, purpose-driven alternatives, to educate our stakeholders, and to lead with each of our own purchasing and packaging decisions to help protect the natural world that sustains us.

Stay tuned to this blog and the rest of Earthcycle.com for frequent updates on our activities, products, consumer tips and the latest news on the eco-responsible packaging industry.

Have a great day, and don’t forget to compost and recycle whenever you can!

-Shannon

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In Perspective

Influencing the Palm Oil Industry

So what about the Palm Oil Industry?

Ethical Sourcing of Palm Fiber for Sustainable Packaging

What is Sustainable Packaging?

Benefits of City Composting

Why Use Packaging in the First Place?

Waste Management at Vancouver 2010 Olympics

Why The Earthcycle Blog?

Welcome to the Earthcycle Blog!

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Resources »

Archive »

Blogs We Like

­In Perspective

Welcome to the Earthcycle Blog!

Categories »

Resources »

Archive »

Blogs We Like

In Perspective