Is Sustainable Manufacturing the Right Move for Your Operation?

The US DoC definition of sustainable fails in that it does not take into account any of the benefits gained from practices that it classes as not sustainable. Take two examples, fertilizers and food packaging. Fertilizer is a major farming cost and run off causes serious pollution but all the current alternatives would lead to food shortages and mass starvation. Not using fertilizer meets all the DoC criteria but is it sustainable in a wider sense. Plastics have greatly increased the shelf life of both fresh and processed foods. From the producers standpoint elimination of plastics in this area would reduce their costs and make them appear to be environmentally friendly but at the expense of food wastage returning to the high level that prevailed prior to plastic packaging being introduced. The expense and environmental damage is multiplied and passed on the the consumer. Reduction, even elimination of plastics in all other packaging applications may be desirable but not for food packaging, The DoCs simplistic definition is not viable.

If this year's Glasgow climate conference does nothing else I would wish it to agree one international worldwide standard for plastics additives that emit fluorescence at different excitation frequencies so that the various grades of plastic can be recycled automatically. If all plastic pellets were doped with a specific additive to tag it's type (PET, HDPE ect.) regardless of where in the world they are produced, recycling into individual grade streams would become not only possible, it would become economically viable, and provide possible solutions for both plastic pollution and where to source plastics when the petrol and diesel fractions of fossil fuel cracking are no longer required. If you don't crack for petrol and diesel you don't get bitumen for road and roof construction, heavy fuel oil for shipping, light oils for lubricants, kerosene for aviation fuel or LPGs for domestic heating and plastics.

Doping a specific additive to tag material type (PET, HDPE) seem to be a good suggestion for segregation.

Although, I seem to have become a bit of skeptic in the last 25 years since I have been working in the Food and Beverage industry. I agree that we need to work towards sustainability, and it has to be holistic approach.

Some of the thoughts that I had on this topic are captured in the below article.

https://www.foodbevhub.com.au/post/64-greenwashed-or-sustainable-packaging-where-are-we-heading/