Recently, a report compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council and As You Sow entitled ‘Waste and Opportunity 2015‘ revealed the leaders and those food/beverage brands lagging behind when it comes to sustainable packaging practices. While we won’t call out any of the brands mentioned in the report, there were a total of 47 beverage and consumer good companies, grocery companies, and fast-food chains analyzed in the report, with those brands that allegedly do not have effective packaging sustainability policies in place costing more than $11 billion per year in wasted materials.

The report accuses those brands that are lagging in packaging sustainability of not only contributing to global pollution, but using packaging that is wasted instead of being recycled. While many brands were found to be taking proactive steps to generate less waste and use recycled content, none earned the ‘Best Practices’ status.

Four pillars of packaging sustainability were used as the basis for determining which brands were leaders, and which were “laggers” after surveying the companies and analyzing the results. These pillars included source reduction, recycled content, recyclability and materials use, and boosting materials recycling. The results of the survey and analysis revealed that companies should make an effort to switch to reusable packaging, utilize recycled content in the creation of new products, minimize or avoid flexible laminate pouches and other materials that are difficult or even impossible to recycle, and place more effort into making sure the packaging they do use that is recyclable is actually recycled.

REA JET realizes the importance of recyclable packaging, and the need for not only these sectors, but others, to focus on packaging that is sustainable, and does not contribute to pollution of our oceans and other aquatic environments which results in harm to marine life.

Regardless of the type of packaging you use in manufacturing food and beverage products, REA JET provides unsurpassed industrial coding and marking solutions you can count on for reliability, durability, and cost-effectiveness over the long term. Our industrial printing equipment is designed to provide indelible marking even on the most difficult substrates. For all of your coding needs, rely on REA JET, a leader in the industry.