Collaboration & Co-Creation Materials & Packaging

Sustainable Packaging’s Biggest Challenge? Human Nature

As EPR laws take hold and consumer expectations rise, the window for proactive collaboration is closing. Brands can put aside their fears around collaboration or risk falling behind.

Sponsored Content | This article is sponsored by GreenBlue | By Paul Nowak | Published 2 months ago | About a 5 minute read

Image: Closed Loop Partners

There’s good news and bad news about why sustainable packaging isn’t scaling fast enough. The good news? We don’t need breakthrough technologies or miracle materials — the key to progress is already here.

The bad news? That key is people, and the barriers are personal.

Right now, fear, ego and inaction within the industry are some of the biggest barriers blocking the collaboration that could solve the packaging industry's — and some of the planet’s — most pressing challenges. As new packaging regulations come online, packaging professionals are navigating uncharted territory and facing novel questions, including:

How will missed sustainability goals affect our reputation?
When Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees kick in, what will happen to our finances?
Will our competitors figure this out before us?

That fear of the unknown is already snowballing into analysis paralysis. But here’s how companies can overcome the very personal barriers blocking progress.

‘What if we fail?’ The fear freezing sustainable progress

Right now, as brands are rewriting or hiding their sustainable packaging goals, their commitments are colliding with a harsh reality: No company, no matter its size, can drive systemic change alone.

Public sustainability goals carry real reputational risk, especially in today’s regulatory landscape. These fears are perfectly reasonable, but they’re not insurmountable.

Here's the reframe: Shared initiatives are both more effective and reduce individual brand exposure. Collaboration spreads cost and risk while accelerating solutions that already exist but remain siloed.

Closed Loop Partners’ Beyond the Bag initiative proves this approach works. The collaboration brought together direct competitors including Target, CVS and Walmart around a shared goal of replacing single-use bags; and their collective impact far exceeded what any single retailer could have achieved alone. By coordinating their efforts, the retailers helped with the potential elimination of up to 9.5 million bags annually across just two test markets.

Now, as packaging regulations roll out and even redefine "recyclable,” brands have a tough choice ahead: They can put aside their fears around collaboration or risk falling behind.

Fight or flight: When ego blocks collaboration

Ego follows fear. When someone is scared or unsure of what lies ahead, their survival instincts kick in. At work, this looks like protecting one’s ego — and it sounds a bit like, “I’ve done it this way forever,” or “Why are they telling me how to do it?”

We’ve built our careers and companies on competitive differentiators, so it's natural to see collaboration as a weakness — like we’re giving up our edge. The brands winning at sustainability are flipping this script. Being first to collaborate enhances your brand positioning as a sustainability leader. It signals to the growing body of consumers who prioritize sustainable packaging that they’re buying from a brand that takes sustainability seriously.

Take Colgate and Haleon as an example. When the two direct competitors joined a coalition of companies addressing toothpaste tube recyclability, neither brand looked weak. They looked like the adults in the room, focused on solutions rather than their own egos.

Mandatory reporting offers a chance to turn compliance from burden to advantage. By sharing non-proprietary recycling data, co-investing in recycling infrastructure upgrades or standardizing formats across categories, forward-thinking companies can shape the new landscape rather than simply react to it. Along the way, they'll build the consumer trust and collaborative relationships that will define the next decade of sustainable packaging.

The status quo just got really expensive

Inaction is the final trap. When fear gives way to protecting your ego, the status quo feels safer than ever — and we see analysis paralysis. Suddenly, brands find themselves frozen — waiting for the perfect solution, the perfect partner, the perfect moment to act.

But the new regulatory landscape has changed the calculus on inaction.

Initial EPR fees are already live in Oregon and changing the true cost of packaging in the UK. And while it may be tempting to focus solely on short-term compliance, brands that sideline long-term investments in R&D and infrastructure risk falling behind. In the years to come, doing nothing will be far more expensive than doing something — even if that something isn’t perfect. The cost of individual solutions — from proprietary recycling research or custom packaging innovations — far exceeds the investment in collaborative harmonization.

The Flexible Film Recycling Alliance’s Store Drop-off Directory reboot shows what's possible when organizations choose to invest in progress over perfection. The first iteration of the directory, which showed consumers where they could drop off films and flexible plastics for recycling collection, went offline in late 2023. When it did, an already imperfect system lost a critical piece of infrastructure.

Key players picked up the pieces. Groups that had never shared data with one another came together to share data and reboot the directory. The result? A coordinated effort that saved a critical piece of recycling infrastructure.

Go farther together

The window for proactive collaboration is narrowing as EPR implementation accelerates and consumer expectations rise. The brands that move first, together, will define and excel in the next era of sustainable packaging. The question isn't whether you can afford to collaborate, but whether you can afford not to.