Why Compostable Packaging Failed To Take Off

Jordan Buckner: [00:00:00] Just a few years ago, it seemed like compostable packaging was hitting mainstream, even with some of the large multinational corporations starting to incorporate and implement that packaging into some of their product lines. But it feels like recently that's really fallen off. And I love to dive into why, because as we know, packaging is still a huge issue when it comes to sustainability and reducing the overall impact within our industry and across the world.

But there's definitely some things that we could do now to improve it while we also look to the future for new technology to come out. So for this episode, I wanted to invite on Shlomo and Elie to really talk about why the situation is the way that it is now. They both work for Josh packaging, which is a family owned business that deals with flexible packaging from pouches to films.

And so they live this every day and see it, experience it firsthand Shlomo and Elie. Welcome. Hey. Glad to be here. Thanks, Jordan. Let's get into it. [00:01:00] I'd love to get a sense from your side what things were like when compostable packaging was like all the rage? Did you look into it? From the manufacturing standpoint and what did you find?

Shlomo: Elliot I know you spent a lot of time Looking into the different, sustainable options a few years ago when it started to get really sexy. So why don't you give me yeah. 

Elie: So I would say it was probably maybe four or five years ago when, there are a lot of buzzwords going around sustainability, recyclable packaging, postable, biodegradable, all these buzzwords floating around.

And it was actually before Shlomo was here. So I was also navigating and guiding our sales team how to answer these questions as well. The first thing that I tried to do was, Google search some suppliers would provide this compostable packaging. And it took a while to find some suppliers to get them on the phone and, X, Y, and Z.

And first I had to understand what compostable packaging is, I think it's really important, to understand the difference between compostable packaging and biodegradable packaging. And I still think everybody has a different definition of it.

From my understanding, and I could be wrong about this so biodegradable packaging is [00:02:00] something that, you know, one of the biodegrades into the earth. Compostable Packaging takes it another step further and it puts a timeline on how it biodegrades slash composts into the earth.

And it takes it another step with what is emitted as it's biodegrading slash composting. We don't want any harmful gases emitting, X, Y, and Z. So when I went on this journey, I first had to get educated and I got educated by reading random Google articles and also by of course, talking to suppliers.

So first thing as I was navigating through it, it was challenging because they weren't clear definitions. People were saying they wanted this, but they really meant that. There was a lot of sifting through from my conversations with suppliers and articles about what it was.

But generally what I came up with was, there's home compostable and there's industrial compostable. So home compostable is, you could just dig a hole in your backyard. Bury whatever it is, whether it's own compostable plastic or food compost, and it does fall into, eventually it will compost into the earth, given the timelines and everything I mentioned before.

Then there is [00:03:00] industrial compostable, which is, you can't just dig a hole in your backyard. It has to actually go to an industrial compost facility. And in that industrial compost facility, they monitor the setting, whether it's humidity, whether it's, extra gases that are pumped into the soil to make a compost a little bit quicker.

So that it meets, the standards of compostability. So with home compost, you have cellulose film. So this is, stuff that's actually made from plant fibers, tree fibers and stuff like that. And for industrial compostable, you have something that's called P lite milk. PLA film is extracted from corn and other, maybe some other plants like that.

And it's it's processed in a lab and stuff like that. And then, but it's very important that everybody knows that this is industrial compostable. So pretty much when someone wants compostable film, the first thing Shlomo and I ask is, do you want home compostable or do you want industrial compostable?

If they want home compostable, we know that we're dealing with cellulose film. Okay. If they want industrial compostable, we know we're dealing with PLA film. And [00:04:00] each one of those comes with their pros and cons when it comes to machine ability, when it comes to optics, when it comes to barriers. And from my, just, just from, it took me such a long time, a person in the packaging industry to get my head around all these buzzwords, all these words, home compostable, PLA film, industrial compostable, all these different things.

And now just imagine us trying to explain this. To a potential salesperson on the other side. It's just a constant uphill battle. And some of the go into, some of these hard conversations, just tried to get us everyone on the same page is what everything means. 

Shlomo: It's really difficult.

So Elie obviously is more of a manufacturing side and helps run our manufacturing technical stuff. And. Sort of the sales director. So I'm communicating with our customers, our sales people. So as the head of the salesperson it's my real job it's my specific duty to make sure that we can communicate the expertise that we have over the, 10, 20, 30 years of knowledge that we have from the flexible packaging world.

And that's when it becomes really tricky when talking about [00:05:00] composability is because it is really complicated. And even the experts don't really know exactly the specifics around compostability, like we can only give them the information that we have. And after Elie's time and effort and hours and talking to all the different film manufacturers and doing all the random Google research and talking to different, manufacturers and peers that we have, it's still really hard to navigate through it.

So when I'm thinking about talking to our customers and making sure that we can simplify it as best as possible. We obviously talk about home versus industrial propostable and then we take it from there and try to gauge exactly what they are looking for from a packaging perspective.

Jordan Buckner: So here's one thing that I see that's always really confusing, right? Because a lot of this is driven both from the companies and brands who want to put out less plastic into the world ideally, but also from customers who, have this vision of a world where like everything is home compostable essentially, but the reality is that I think [00:06:00] most.

The compostable things out there, a lot of them are industrial compostable and it's really tough to get that packaging to an industrial compostable facility because most communities don't have them. And if so, then you're like adding another layer of packaging and shipping to get it to that facility, which also has some more.

Elie: And this just goes back to, the general theme of what we're talking about is why hasn't compost packaging, really taken off. And I think the number one thing is. The communication of just what we're actually talking about is just so difficult as it is. Forget about the price points.

Forget about the machine ability, the actual conversation of what we're actually, going to provide and what those customers are going to provide to their customers and their distribution centers. It takes a lot of effort. There's a lot of time. There's a lot of phone calls. And, this industry is very rushed rush.

You can't fall behind, you got to meet the man's end. And all this R& D, all this talking back and forth, it takes time and it's a lot of effort , and I really think that this is something that a lot of people don't really take into consideration when they [00:07:00] want to transition to a different film.

And it's very difficult in this specific category. Don't just standing everybody on the same page. 

Shlomo: I think, from my perspective. What we really try to do as the manufacturing experts within packaging is to make sure that we give our customers and our potential customers the information that they need to make the strategic decision that they want to accomplish.

No greenwashing, nothing like that. We're very upfront. 

So here are the things that we tell our customers when they're thinking about. Let's go into composability. One, we tell them that up front, it's going to be really expensive. It's going to be two, three, four times the cost of what you're paying today.

Okay? The next thing we tell them is, it's going to take a lot longer. Composable film is really hard to get. Just because you have really good access to, and good relationship with some suppliers, which we've built up over the years and, through the numerous conversations we've had does not mean that you're going to get really quick lead times.

It's very tricky because you're dealing with a super specific type of material [00:08:00] that's only made by a small subset of manufacturers, not just in America, but throughout the world. And it basically creates a situation where you can't diversify the amount of film suppliers you get. And we're talking about 10, 12, 14 weeks potentially for film.

And just to piggyback 

Elie: on that is, a lot of the times when we know we're having trouble, receiving film and we know our customers, they work on film. short notice, quick lead times, we would store that film in our warehouse somewhere just so we have it in stock so we can get the orders going when they want a quick release.

With something like compostable film, no one, very few converters like us are going to hold actual compostable film in their warehouse. Number one, it's a little bit more sensitive, so it has to be stored in more pertinent conditions. And the second thing is that, Let's say we take in a truckload of compostable film, raw film, and then, for whatever reason, the customer says, You know what?

This compostable film is not really working. I don't want to pay the extra dollar. It's harder on our machines. Let's switch back to our regular film. And then we're stuck with twenty, thirty thousand pounds of compostable film. So it really has to be [00:09:00] Ordering, you order based on, you order the film based on the order that's filming it.

Jordan Buckner: And I wonder too, because it is the lack of supply due to specific patents that companies have and they're limiting the supply. Is it that like demand isn't quite caught up with supplies? Like they don't want to make a whole bunch of product because the demand is not there. Is like The quality of the end product to the consumer not quite there where like brands try it and then end up switching back and it was that like, 

Shlomo: I think it's all the above.

We're talking about all the reasons why compostable packaging is not taking off. And we're, we've been talking about it for 10 minutes and there's still like a variety of other reasons why it's not working, like you have customers that are really interesting, but composable and Elie said, they'll do a trial run and then they'll see the film and they're like, Oh, this is not going to work.

So like more reasons why this isn't working. The feel of the film itself is very different than the standard, type of flexible packaging that you would see, whether it's polypropylene, polyethylene any sort of cast polypropylene or [00:10:00] nylon film. It's a very different feel. A lot of people want to get something that is either soft to the touch or not as loud, and it's really weird to if you're not familiar with packaging, it's not going to make sense to you, but compostable packaging is really crinkly and crispy.

And it might look okay, but once you go to the shelf and you pick up a compostable package, you'll know it immediately because it feels really different. 

Jordan Buckner: Yeah, it's if you open a bag in the grocery store, it feels like you're crumpling chips. 

Elie: Yeah, you want to just go back to what you said.

It's a very good question, why aren't there more compostable film suppliers out there? To get into our world, the capital investment on machines is so great. It's really great. And before someone could really dive in and put your money with all those, heavy machineries, you have to make, you have to prove a concept.

And it's a little risky not knowing, what's going to happen next with the compostable packaging world, everybody's talking about now PCR and recyclability. And composable is going down. So you have few players, it's very risky on their end they're taking the risk and they're investing [00:11:00] in the equipment.

But I know that there, some of them are struggling to keep their lines pumping and some of them don't have enough capacity because it's very hard for them to find that middle ground, that, that safe spot of, finding that equilibrium of being busy and being slow. So it's very important for, people on our industry to realize.

That the capital investment for these kind of machine machineries are great and to invest in this kind of capital machinery it's risky because it's not a straightforward path of what the compost packing role is going to be like. 

Shlomo: And it also ties into why compostability, down the line isn't as accessible as we think it is, right?

Because the infrastructure isn't in place because there isn't enough compost packaging out there to make sure that it's worth it. So why would, I'm not speaking like for the government or anything, but like, why would these. Why would the government or why would these mega, energy companies or these huge waste disposal companies invest in something that isn't necessarily taken off?

And it's like the chicken or the egg, for one thing to happen, the other thing needs to happen and vice versa. And until that sort of infrastructure is in place, and until those manufacturers [00:12:00] are creating the type of packaging that can use the infrastructure, it's never really going to happen.

Elie: And again, at the speed and at the volume that people who aren't in this industry expected that. 

Jordan Buckner: Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about to the what brands can do next. So I know a lot of founders are like, I hate the fact I'm like putting out so much plastic into the world.

That's just going to be thrown away mostly. Because even for films . In home recyclability programs aren't quite there. A lot of times they're like a grocery store drop off compostable. I think I shared this story with you as well, because. When I first moved, I had all this like plastic film, and I kept going to Home Depot and just like dropping it in their like plastic recycling film bin, and then a couple weeks later, they actually put up a sign that said Home Depot Bazzed Only, and so I feel like all these companies are like, take it to your grocery store, the grocery store is like, and the hardware store, they're like, I don't want this, 

Elie: right?

I go to my local grocery store, I open up that bin, there's a bunch of crap that's in there, I should not be in there, and only I know, only I'm educated to know that. 

Jordan Buckner: So let's jump into what brands can do [00:13:00] now to actually reduce the packaging waste that they're putting out into the world.

Elie: The first thing that these brands have to do is they have to educate themselves. They have to understand what makes a package recyclable. We know what makes a package compostable. It's a lot more straightforward, right? You use comp But the, a lot of times we are talking to people and they don't understand what makes a package compostable and what makes a pack recyclable, excuse me, and what makes a package not recyclable.

And this is one of Shlomo's and our sales team's jobs is to educate them. So just to take a step back, I think it's very important for us to explain that. There's all these different kinds of plastic families, and that's what that recyclable, everybody, on the package, you have that little triangle symbol.

And then that triangle symbol, there's actually a number on it. And that number means what plastic family, that plastic is being made out of. There's one through seven. So one is PET, two is high density polyethylene, three is this, four is low density polyethylene, five is polypropylene, et cetera, et cetera.

 For a end package to be recyclable, it has to be made out of one of those plastic families. So if we're taking something that, a laminated pouch, right? So you're printing out one [00:14:00] plastic, and you're laminating it to another plastic. So in this most common is you're printing out, Printing on PET, which is Recyclable Symbol 1, and you're laminating it to a polyethylene, which could be Recyclable Symbol 4.

Because you're using two different plastic families in one package, you can't separate those two. They're going to have different streams of recyclability, and that makes it not recyclable. For something to be recyclable and you want it to be a laminated pouch, for instance, it has to come from the same plastic family.

The printing film has to be from recyclable sample 4 or 2, and the sealing film has to be from that same triangle sample. 

Jordan Buckner: Now, why is it often that packaging is made from two different materials? Is it based off of like moisture barrier properties or a light barrier? 

Elie: So this, yeah, this is a beautiful question that again, we have to explain to our customers as well.

So remember, plastic packaging has been around for a while and these, all these materials are super engineered. To make sure that everything looks really good optics wise, everything has great barriers, everything has great puncture resistance and every, and most important that a lot of people forget [00:15:00] about is the machinability of it, everything runs through your machine as fast and low waste as possible.

So when we're printing on a certain kind of plastic, we're choosing that plastic because it has certain properties like very high loss. It has a very good stiffness to it and make it run through the machine faster. It has a very good heat resistant property. So you could put a lot of heat on your seal jaws and the material won't burn up.

And then we would laminate it to something like polyethylene, which has very good sealing property. So it could seal at very low temperatures. It could stretch a little bit, which is, which counteracts, the stiff bone that you're using.

We're using different kinds of plastic to engineer a beautiful structure. That's going to be, that's going to look great. It's going to feel great. It's going to tear great. It's going to hold up to all these different kinds of crazy transportation conditions, and it's going to run on our machine and the customer machine as, as perfectly as possible.

So now when we're trying to switch up that structure to comply with recyclability, we have to also take in consideration all of those things that we just spoke about. And that's where it's very challenged. 

Shlomo: Yeah. So what I'll say [00:16:00] is Elie's just talking about this sort of quote unquote superstructure.

That's what we tell our customers, right? Like they're like why do we use this superstructure that Gives you the best sort of machine ability and look and feel for your customers at the same time, sometimes barriers as well. If that's required when you move. So one of, we talked about being really important at transparency.

So if you go from that superstructure, which is like those two different materials of the pet polyethylene, or the number one and number four, and you switch to a full polyethylene structure, which would still be laminated if you want a pouch, you There are things that we need to tell them to make sure they understand what some of the downsides are.

Now, you are going to have it to be able to be recyclable. Most likely store drop out recyclable because that's the way it goes. But the downsides are, because you're using a polyethylene to polyethylene structure, it's likely that super nice clean tear that you get at the top of the pouch isn't going to be as easy to rip off and it's not going to tear like as easy, right?

And it'd be hazier as well. So we've had to have conversations with customers that if you [00:17:00] are doing that, maybe you add like the scissor symbol or maybe you just say rip gear or something, because you just have to have those conversations with customers. Otherwise, they don't know what they're getting.

So that's some of the transparency that comes out of it. The other thing that we'll see is, we obviously have like I said before, we have really good relationships with our suppliers and we make sure to find the most optimal way. To make something for our customers that meets their recyclability and sustainability needs.

At the same time, when you switch from that superstructure to a recyclable structure, there will be some manufacturing differences between how they run their product lines as well. And as Elie mentioned, he's the manufacturing guy and work, the sales guy, but I know manufacturing any second slower, you're going to pay for it.

And you try to optimize as best you can. So that's when we really try to have field engineers in, on the field, Visiting with them, talking about the different seal initiation temperatures to make sure that we can give them as much guidance as possible and they know what they're coming into. I'll give you a 

Elie: Very good specific example.

So when it comes to a recyclable pouch, right? So we [00:18:00] print on , polyethylene and we laminate the polyethylene. And one of the characteristics of polyethylene is that it seals at a very low temperature. And that's why we use it as a sealing film. But in terms of recyclability, we have to use it for both films.

So as we're running it through our pouch machine and those seal jaws are coming down, heat number one, sometimes it actually burns through the film and the whole film rips and we have to rewrap the machine. But what's more often that's happening is because it's so heat sensitive, when those heat jaws come down, the poly is actually stretching a little bit.

So as it's, so you're not going get a clean cut. Every single time where the impression is right in the middle, where the zipper brushes are perfect, where, you know, where the seals are perfectly lined up, because as that machine is tracking, as the poly is tracking through the machine and all those heat jobs are coming down.

The poly is stretching a tiny bit because of the heat sensitivity, and it's creating a very big difficulty for operators to keep everything right in the middle. So because of that, to offset that, we have to run our machines 30, 40 percent slower just to make that the pouches that are coming out are good and to pass quality.

And at the same time, I would say maybe 5 to [00:19:00] 10 times more waste running those kind of jobs versus a traditional pouch job. 

Jordan Buckner: We had that experience when I was running my brand TeaSquares as well. I forget the exact structure, but I remember we had a horizontal flow wrapper manually loaded and we constantly had issues where like the jaws were too high and when they would cut the seal.

It would almost scrunched together and have this like wave effect. And then also at other times, like the jaws would almost stretch the plastic and it would spring back and then throw off the rest of it, slow down 

Elie: or stop it. And then another big thing, Jordan, is that a lot of people use co manufacturers.

So now we have to relay that information, hopefully directly, but sometimes through the middleman who's our customer. About what differences they can expect and, they don't control their commands operation. Obviously we don't control their commands operation. We're in there sometimes helping their coman, but, we can't control the level of sophistication that our machines are or their operators are, we do our best but it's tough.

It's challenging. It's not that it's not [00:20:00] impossible, but it has to challenge. 

Shlomo: That's why I push our sales team to get as much information as possible. We have different sort of meetings and calls and documents. We're in trial orders to make sure that as much of the information as we can provide it, we can get as possible.

We try to optimize the, our customer's experience because there's undoubtedly going to be some hurdles that we have to jump through, especially when you're going to a more sustainable option. Yeah. I thought that was recommended. We welcome those challenges, like we love those projects because.

It's really it's obviously something that we believe in and we want to continue to invest in, it does have its challenges but it also can result in really big wins for all the parts. Yeah. 

Elie: One of the first things we do is we take a look at the, if someone wants to transition from a traditional structure to a recyclable structure, one of the first things we do is we take a look at their spec sheets and what we're looking at with their spec sheets is stiffness, it's puncture resistance, it's the barrier properties, it's the haze factors, we're looking at all these things and now We're looking at all [00:21:00] the recyclable film options we have, and we're engineering a structure for them that's going to, best as possible, imitate to us as closely, what their traditional packaging is.

And we've done a great job with it. If someone wants a recyclable pouch that has high barriers, we have a solution for it. Someone wants a recyclable pouch that has very good puncture resistance, we got a solution for it. Someone wants a recyclable pouch That's a soft touch map.

We got a solution. Someone wants a registered map, we have a solution for it. So it's not that we don't have the solutions for it. It just takes a little bit more conversations with the customer. And it does run slower on our machines and their machines.

Jordan Buckner: Yeah. One thing I always recommend for brands as well as anytime you have a new packaging material or type, always work with your manufacturer or like a contract manufacturer to test it and make sure it runs on their equipment. Because I've seen lots of issues where manufacturer might run. A thousand, 5, 000, 10, 000 units of your product just to realize that there's a material defect.

And all that problem is product is wasted. A lot of times [00:22:00] the product inside along with the packaging is wasted. I'm sure she's going to have lots of stories and see what's happened. 

Shlomo: Yeah. And Elie said, a lot of people that we work with. Need their packaging. Yes. And, as much as we'd love to tell them, we can have your packaging yesterday with, the sustainable option that you want to go to we would be doing them and ourselves this service if we weren't really pushing trial, because if you don't do that, you get the nightmare situation that you just mentioned where you have.

A it's a sort of packaging that you can't use in product that's not going to be reusable in it because it's, defective or whatever. 

Jordan Buckner: Guys, this is great. I love everything that you mentioned here. And one thing that I really appreciate is you guys know what you're talking about. You've seen the horror stories and like what can go wrong to what the other options are.

And like you said, it's not that things are impossible. It's just that they come with is important , to understand. And what I'd love to do as we end as well, like if anyone has like flexible film pouches and they're looking to, find a supplier, make change, I highly recommend reaching out to Josh Packaging, we'll put your info in the show notes because all these questions [00:23:00] are things that you need to be asking if you don't even know the questions to ask, right?

Talk to Shlomo, we'll talk to Elie to really figure out like, Hey, what even should I be asking myself? Till I can make the best packaging choice for my brand guys. Thanks so much for being on today. 

Elie: Thanks, Jordan.