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Search “Sustainability is a shared responsibility,” said Roger Zellner, GPP Co-Chair and Director, Sustainability, Research, Development & Quality of Kraft Foods “By creating a common language and identifying shared global industry metrics this initiative will enable manufacturers and retailers to work together to develop packaging solutions to help achieve agreed sustainability goals.”
Global project on packaging and sustainability enters pilot phase
PARIS, 27th January 2010 – In an ongoing effort to drive global change in packaging, leaders from many of the world’s largest consumer goods companies and major retailers have approved a suggested set of common definitions and principles for packaging in the framework of sustainability. This common language will support a global discourse on packaging in the context of environmental, economic and social impacts.
An assembly of The Consumer Goods Forum’s (The Forum) Global Packaging Project (GPP) met in Toronto Canada on January 19th – 20th to establish a common industry language for packaging and sustainability and to outline final terms for the launch of pilot projects.
“The Global Packaging Project started because retailers and manufacturers wanted a consistent approach to packaging of consumer goods,” said Sonia Raja, GPP Co-Chair and Head of Packaging, Tesco. “We need to find a common way of measuring environmental and sustainability improvements on packaging that can be used across the world.”
Collectively there was recognition that inconsistent measures between different actors in the packaged goods supply chain intended to improve packaging’s contribution to sustainable development risked leading to unnecessary complexity, added cost and suboptimal environmental, economic and social results.
The next phase of the project is to validate the output of the project; the principles for packaging and sustainability and a set of agreed indicators and metrics, within real business situations. Pilots will take place over a six-month testing stage. The Forum is targeting approval of the final report and deliverables in November 2010.
The definitions and principles adopted by the GPP reflect the guidelines on packaging and sustainability produced by ECR Europe and EUROPEN, the European Organization for Packaging and the Environment. The metrics to be tested are adapted from those developed and recently released by the US Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC).
About the Global Packaging Project
The Global Packaging Project of the Consumer Goods Forum is jointly chaired by Roger Zellner, Kraft Foods and Sonia Raja, Tesco. Participating companies include a wide range of retailers and consumer goods manufacturers. The GPP is supported by packaging manufacturers, industry and trade associations from Europe and North America and a number of academic institutions.
The Consumer Goods Forum
The Consumer Goods Forum is an independent global parity-based Consumer Goods network. It brings together the CEOs and senior management of around 650 retailers, manufacturers, service providers and other stakeholders across 70 countries.
The Forum was created in June 2009 by the merger of CIES – The Food Business Forum, the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) and the Global CEO Forum.
The Consumer Goods Forum is governed by its Board of Directors, which includes an equal number of manufacturer and retailer CEOs and chairpersons. Forum member companies have combined sales of EUR 2.1trillion.
The Forum provides a unique global platform for thought leadership, knowledge exchange and networking between retailers, manufacturers and their partners on collaborative, non-competitive issues. Its strength lies in the privileged access it offers to the key players in the sector as well as in the development and implementation of best practices along the value chain.
It has a mandate from its members to develop common positions on key strategic and practical issues affecting the consumer goods business and to focus on non-competitive collaborative process improvement.
With its headquarters in Paris and its regional offices in Washington, D.C., Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai, The Consumer Goods Forum serves its members throughout the world.
For more information on the Project:
Julian Carroll, EUROPEN
(+32) 2 736 36 00
packaging@europen.be
Katrin Recke, AIM – The European Brands Association
(+32) 2 736 03 05
email katrin.recke@aim.be
For more information on The Consumer Goods Forum:
Sabine Ritter, The Consumer Goods Forum
(+49) 221 9 47 14 423
s.ritter@theconsumergoodsforum.com
