Driscoll’s leads the produce industry in increasing the circularity of packaging and landfill diversion of agricultural plastics. It’s the first berry company to make public commitments and inject serious funding into innovation — with a goal to create economies of scale.
Driscoll’s berries are the culmination of a
century’s experience of growing, harvesting and delivering the freshest, most
nutritious berries possible to the market. And plastics are a key ingredient in
Driscoll’s success, from improving berry production to increased shelf-life.
The family-owned company has been thinking creatively about reducing the
negative impacts of plastic in its supply chain. It has joined the Sustainable Packaging Coalition
and taken the “Berry Sustainable” joint
pledge, and has been working to improve the circularity of its clamshell
packaging. Driscoll’s has committed to 100 percent recycle-ready packaging by
2025, which includes:
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Pre-competitive collaborations and information-sharing with suppliers and
industry groups helps scale existing solutions, spur new solutions, and
cross-pollinate on recycling innovations across the industry and beyond.
In April of last year, Driscoll’s became the first US produce company to
join the New Plastics Economy Global
Commitment. The
partnership, led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with the
UN Environmental Programme, sets a clear and unified vision for a circular
plastics
economy.
“With these partnerships, we’re trying to understand the state of recycling and
where we can leverage our power as a brand to make a difference,” Camille
Herrera, Driscoll’s packaging development and sustainability manager, told
Sustainable Brands™.
Driscoll’s switched to ventilated plastic clamshell packaging in the ‘90s.
Improvements in product safety and longevity were a huge boon over fiber-based
predecessors, which were prone to dissolving when moist. Driscoll’s clamshell
packaging already contains 50 percent recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET),
sourced primarily from recycled plastic bottles — and the company aims to
substitute it with 25 percent post-consumer resin (PCR), from used plastic
clamshells, into its packaging by 2025.
“It’s not enough for Driscoll’s to put out this material and say ‘Hey, it’s
recyclable.’ We needed to say, ‘This is our material, it’s recyclable, and it is
made from recycled clamshells,’” Herrera said.
While great for protecting and transporting fruit, PET clamshells are
challenging to recycle with PET bottles due to the difference in their
flexibility, which causes them to melt unevenly when mixed. By directing its
packaging suppliers to incorporate 25 percent recycled PET clamshells back into
new clamshells by 2025, Driscoll’s is creating a new supply chain and economy of
scale for recycled clamshells. In 2021 alone, Driscoll’s circular clamshell
initiative diverted nearly 12 million pounds of PET clamshell packaging from
landfills.
Beyond packaging
Image credit: Driscoll's
But clamshell packaging is only a part of Driscoll’s circularity story. The
plastics used to grow and harvest berries represent a massive share of the total
plastics footprint in Driscoll’s production and value chain. Through
pre-competitive industry partnerships, a new innovation challenge, and deeper
collaboration with suppliers and consumers, Driscoll’s is working to close the
loop on all of its plastics challenges — in and out of the field.
Field plastics represent a
broad set of plastic products used to grow berries in the field. Their
introduction into berry production provided multiple benefits — including
improved yield, reduced water and waste, and product safety and quality.
In fact, the company says its growth and success has largely been made possible
by the use of field plastics. From bed mulch to hoop houses to drip irrigation
materials, field plastics are key to the quality and consistency of Driscoll’s
berries. Without them, growers would have to increase their dependency on inputs
including pesticides, fertilizer and water.
“The yield and quality increases that we see [when using plastics] are quite
significant; and they allow us to grow and produce fruit year-round,” said
James duBois, senior manager of environmental impact at Driscoll’s of The
Americas.
How do you solve a problem like field plastics?
Driscoll’s is leading the industry with the creation of pre-competitive
partnerships to assist in reducing the impact of plastics in and out of the
field. In addition to its clamshell initiatives, Driscoll’s seeks to raise
awareness of the challenges the greater industry faces in dealing with field
plastic.
Discarded field plastics are unsightly, their disposal logistically challenging;
and they negatively
affect
communities and the local environment. And because nearly all field plastics
carry some amount of soil residue, they’re extremely difficult to recycle.
“The end-life disposal of [field] plastics presents both a social and
environmental issue,” duBois says. “In some cases, there isn’t an end-of-life
strategy for [field] plastics.”
Collecting, sorting and delivering clean plastics to a recycling facility is a
monumental challenge for growers and their communities — leading many field
plastics to landfill, duBois says. Driscoll’s is committed to addressing this
challenge head on.
Field-plastic recycling must be tailored for each region depending on the
climate, crop and type/use of plastic in circulation; it’s also dependent on
regional recycling infrastructure. Recycling field plastics had fits and starts
in the early 2000s and has improved nominally in the last five years.
“That — combined with our growth and entry into new areas where there aren’t as
many options for end-of-life disposal — we decided that we needed to focus on
assuring end-of-life solutions are available in the regions that we operate,”
duBois says.
The first step was understanding the waste that Driscoll’s growers generate. The
company has cataloged the types and amounts of plastics generated in each region
and for each crop, as well as reviewed solutions to each area’s specific issues
and current recycling rates. Driscoll’s has reached out to recyclers in the US
and Mexico to identify opportunities to increase the recyclability of field
plastics through collection and cleaning processes, and the company is investing
in ways to improve recyclability — its goal is to divert all field plastics
waste in key regions by 2025.
To improve recycling and cultivate sustainable alternatives to field plastics,
Driscoll’s launched the Agricultural Plastics Innovation
Challenge with Think Beyond
Plastics and other industry competitors in
October of last year. The Innovation Challenge is designed to identify nascent
solutions for collecting, recycling, composting or converting field plastics
into useful materials, and scale these solutions. Winning solutions will be
announced in February 2022 and will be piloted in Driscoll’s value chain and
those of industry collaborators.
“All of [Driscoll’s] work highlights the importance of packaging stewardship,”
Herrera said. “You see companies making investments in not just ensuring their
packaging material is technically recyclable, but making investments to make
sure that it’s practically recyclable.”
Driscoll’s leads the industry in increasing the circularity of packaging and
landfill diversion of field plastics. It’s the first berry company to make
public commitments and inject serious funding into innovation — with a goal to
create economies of scale.
As Alejandra Sanchez, Driscoll’s corporate social responsibility marketing
manager, summed up: “The more of us that are making similar commitments and
putting pressure on the marketplace, the easier this is going to be and the more
benefit there is.”
Published Jan 27, 2022 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET
Christian is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and outdoor junkie obsessed with the intersectionality between people and planet. He partners with brands and organizations with social and environmental impact at their core, assisting them in telling stories that change the world.
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