🔉 Discussing the "multiple dimensions to sustainability”
Sustainability
October 18, 2022Reading time: 2 minutes
Jeremy Wallach, Partner at McKinsey & Company, joins David Clark, Vice President, Sustainability at Amcor, on the Amcor Big Ideas podcast to discuss the multi-faceted journey towards a circular economy, and how the packaging industry’s challenges are complex across the value chain.
Jeremy’s work is predominately focused on the chemicals and materials sector, leading him to contribute to McKinsey’s latest study on the impact of plastics and other materials in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and analyzing the role plastics can play in crafting a more sustainable future.
The premise of the latest McKinsey report, the Climate Impact of Plastics, was to explore and compare the total GHG contribution of plastic products against those made from alternative materials. The study took into account the full product life span, from production and transportation to use and end of life.
The research found that plastics in the US had a lower GHG contribution than non-plastic alternatives that are used at scale in 13 out of 14 of the applications that were investigated. This means that in the contexts explored, plastics had a more favorable climate impact than alternative packaging solutions including paper, glass, and aluminum.
In the podcast, the pair explore how this area has not been well-represented within the discussion of packaging sustainability, and how more consideration needs to be taken in this area. The findings of this study have allowed McKinsey and its partners to open conversations about the analysis of plastics’ lifecycles.
Currently, there's a tendency from brands and manufacturers to lean toward using one material based on what seems superficially the most interesting or the most ‘sustainable’, without understanding the wider implications of GHG emissions and the environmental impacts across the value chain.
To avoid that, Jeremy and Dave discuss the “multiple dimensions to sustainability”, including different levels of environmental impact based on different stages of the product lifecycle, the use of different materials, and how the underlying energy system plays a key role in determining the GHG emissions impact of different materials on a market-to-market basis. Their conversation opens the door to a more intelligent and forward-thinking approach to sustainability, rooted in the realities of the real-world economy.
To hear more from Jeremy and Dave, listen to the full podcast here.
To read more about the articles from McKinsey & Co. discussed in the podcast, follow the links below.
True packaging sustainability: Understanding the performance trade-offs
Addressing the challenges of plastic waste: Circularity and leakage
