GreenBlue

Upcoming GreenBlue Events

This upcoming fall will be a very busy time for GreenBlue. Next month, this year’s SPC Fall Members-Only Meeting will be taking place September 19-20 in at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dallas, Texas. The meeting is being co-located with Packaging Strategies’ Sustainable Packaging Forum, which will be September 20-22 at the same location. For SPC member companies who have not yet registered, please visit the event webpage for more information about the meeting and for registration instructions, or email us if you have any questions about this SPC event.

There are also two upcoming Forest Products events. Last month, we announced that GreenBlue’s new Forest Products Working Group is officially kicking off this fall. The inaugural Forest Products Working Group meeting will be taking place in Boston on October 6 for founding members, so stay tuned for more updates from the group. Additionally, the next Corporate Forum for Paper and the Environment meeting will take place this upcoming November in New York. Members of both groups should expect to receive further details on these meetings in the coming weeks, but please feel free to contact us for more information about these either of these Forest Products events in the meantime.

Packaging

Essentials of Sustainable Packaging International Edition

The SPC will launch the Essentials of Sustainable Packaging course in Mexico and China this fall. The first international course will take place in Mexico City on November 15 and will be offered in conjunction with AMEE, the Mexican packaging association. We are still negotiating options for China in October, and the tentative cities are Beijing and Shanghai. The new course will be a one-day version of the Essentials of Sustainable Packaging course that has been offered in the United States and Canada since 2008 and is ideal for packaging professionals seeking continuous training in sustainability as it relates to packaging. You can download the course brochure for more information, or find a more detailed course summary here.

Packaging

Updated Definition of Sustainable Packaging

We recently revised the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s Vision for Sustainable Packaging to better represent the current packaging environment. Most notably, the criteria that sustainable packaging “is made from materials healthy all probable end of life scenarios” was modified to read “is made from materials healthy throughout the life cycle.” This change embodies a stronger life cycle focus for material health concerns. You can download the full version of the SPC Definition of Sustainable Packaging Version 2.0 here.

Forest Products

New Content on Paper Life Cycle

The Paper Life Cycle website promotes greater understanding of the key issues throughout the paper supply chain. Content for the site is developed based on the issues most relevant to the pulp and paper sector for a wide range of stakeholders. We recently added new content to the Paper Life Cycle website from GreenBlue’s Closing the Loop Design for Recovery Guidelines for Paper Packaging, which were released last month. This report, which encourages recycling or composting of paper packaging, is part of a comprehensive suite of reports that focus on the compatibility of packaging design with common recovery methods for various packaging materials. You can find these recent additions to the Paper Life Cycle here or download the full Design for Recovery Guidelines for Paper Packaging report here.