Sustainability seems to pervade all conversations about flexible packaging—including how people view their pets. That makes sustainability top of mind for brand owners because it is top of mind for pet owners.
“Most of us as pet owners tend to be more environmentally conscious, or sustainability aware, than maybe other end-use markets,” said Caleb Triplett, director of product management for the flexible packaging segment of Berry Global.
“Many of the leading pet food brand owners are leading in terms of sustainable packaging, so we see the pet food segment as a leading segment with sustainable packaging.”
Like their human-food counterparts, the owners of pet food and pet care brands avail themselves of the solutions inherent in flexible packaging. And like industries worldwide, they are overlaying their performance demands with a focus on sustainability. It is “a delicate balance,” says Bill Barlow, senior market development manager responsible for pet products at Printpack.
“Yes, sustainability is still important, but we also want these looks and features that we’ve had for years that differentiate our packaging on the shelf, and we’re having to reverse engineer and think about those things differently,” Barlow says.
Now, a new, streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) produced for the Flexible Packaging Association (FPA) by PTIS, LLC equips converters with comparative data for educating brand owners about key sustainability components of popular pet food and pet care packaging.
In an age when many LCAs still concentrate on human food and beverages, the time was right for covering “a category that is growing,” PTIS Principal Todd Bukowski says. “People care about their pets,” Bukowski says. “Even in times of economic hardship, they’re not willing to sacrifice the type of food or treats they want to give their pets. Consumers are very caring about their furry family members.”
Growing Concern
Humans may be the ultimate consumers of pet food packaging, but when an audible zipper closure signals suppertime, dogs break into the Snoopy happy dance.
“It’s another opportunity for the consumer to bond with their pet,” says Jamie Lindberg, vice president of national accounts at PPC Flex.
Within that special bond, as sustainability continues weighing heavily in packaging decisions, PTIS and FPA have collaborated on LCAs for such promising sectors as e-commerce, cereal, and laundry detergents.
The pet LCA—“A Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment Comparison of Pet Food Packages”—turns the spotlight on the skyrocketing area of pet food and pet products. The wide range of package formats in pet supply stores inspired PTIS and FPA to produce the comparison, released in June 2024.
The world’s largest pet care brands and divisions have been leaders in sustainability for a decade, establishing aggressive targets for sustainability in operations, sourcing, and packaging, Lindberg says. Prompted by consumer demand and regulatory mandates, “the brand owners we work with are increasingly placing significant value on packaging solutions that are sustainable.”
The new LCA compares flexible packaging for dog and cat food, dog treats, flea collars, and dog dental treats with their counterparts packaged in other formats, including foil-based retort pouches, clear retort pouches, thermoformed cups with foil lid stock, rigid tubs, and corrugated cases. Using industry average data from EcoImpact-COMPASS, updated regularly by Trayak, the report examined each package’s fossil fuel use, global warming potential, and water consumption, plus material efficiency and material discarded.
Bukowski did some secret shopping, buying the selected products—all popular purchases for pet owners—in comparable weights but in different types of commonly used packaging. The criteria boiled down to this question: Where is flexible packaging being used and what are the competitive packs?
The packaging was then deconstructed, and all components were weighed and analyzed for their content. Use of the EcoImpact-COMPASS tool and consultation with Trayak uncovered answers to questions about data that may have changed from previous years such as a trend toward lower water consumption in paper products.
“We try to develop insights using the data,” Bukowski says. “What does it mean? Why is flexible packaging advantageous here or not advantageous? We have that explanation in the report.”
“People care about their pets. Even in times of economic hardship, they’re not willing to sacrifice the type of food or treats they want to give their pets. Consumers are very caring about their furry family members.”
Todd Bukowski, PTIS principaL
Decision Tool
In every case examined in the LCA, flexible packaging outpaced the competition among most metrics. (Find the full report at www.flexpack.org.) For companies intent on reducing their global warming potential, aka carbon footprint, the LCA found, for example, that a stand-up pouch offers substantially lower emissions across its materials, manufacturing, and end-of-life than a carton and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) jar.
In general, flexible packaging wins because it uses less material per gram of product, Bukowski says. The LCA results do not address other factors in packaging decisions such as brand equity and convenience features for customers, but they can still showcase the smaller overall impact of flexible packaging.
“The life cycle assessment is part of the story,” Bukowski says. “Brand equity is part of the story. Consumer usage is part of the story. All of those go together to help brands make their decisions.”
As brand owners continue embracing flexible packaging for its favorable attributes, including brand impact and convenience, the LCA can help converters add sustainability to the conversations. “They can use this tool to educate brand owners about the pros and cons,” he says. “It’s one tool that a brand will use when deciding on what’s a right fit for their product.”
Challenges and Opportunities
The LCA, with its curated data, “level sets perception versus reality” and provides a discussion tool for educating brand owners on the state of available materials as they strive for sustainability goals, Lindberg says.
“What are the best solutions today?” she says. “Where do certain solutions need work or improvement? No solution is perfect. We know that. Setting that baseline so we can all improve together, collectively, is the only way all this is going to work to get to what we need to do.”
Individually and collaboratively through efforts including the Pet Sustainability Coalition, brand owners and converters are pursuing recyclability and store drop-off recycling programs for flexible packaging for pet products.
Printpack, a longtime provider of large-format bags and pouches for the pet food sector, is planning investments to expand its capacity for providing pouches and bags in the market. The company is working with three major pet food leaders to develop and commercialize all-polyethylene packaging for recyclability, and it has also commercialized a major pet food brand’s packaging with International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC)-certified circular content.
Megan Robison, Printpack’s product stewardship manager, noted that engineers are working to improve the recyclability of flexible packaging while sustaining the favorable outcomes found in LCAs, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions, lower fossil fuel use, and less water consumption. “That is like a silver bullet,” she says. “We’re trying to be able to do both. Now, if you want to be recyclable, consumer packaged goods are moving into heavier, rigid containers, but with all the work that Printpack and others are doing, you can have both, and that’s where we’re driving.”
Brands remain concerned about the lingering conflict between performance and sustainability, perhaps reluctant to reach for recyclability if it means giving up on downgauging of non-recyclable materials, Robison says. LCAs give converters backup information for “putting those questions into perspective” and generating pathways to interim solutions that improve sustainability performance measures while bridging to full recyclability, she says.
“If a recyclable bag increases greenhouse gas emissions but the company is looking at a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which goal is more important?” she says. “What are the trade-offs the brand is willing to make? It’s our job to continue innovating to downgauge and to give them a resolution that meets both of their goals.”
Berry Global’s converter customers note that as pet food brands focus on sustainability, they recognize trade-offs may be necessary to achieve their sustainability goals. For example, Triplett cites trade-offs in the factors of cost, performance, and availability of supply. Some are rethinking their specifications and determining whether they have over-engineered on performance characteristics.
The classic LCA factors continue to show that flexible packaging is more sustainable and has a better end-of-life story, but two intermingled challenges linger, says Allison Holzshu, vice president of product management at Berry Global. While the industry waits to learn the fees assessed on nonsustainable plastic packaging by state-level extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs, few pet food brand owners are making on-package sustainability claims.
“There’s not a strong linkage between what it means for greenhouse gas emissions and how consumers view plastic packaging,” she says. “They hear ‘plastics,’ and they hear a demonized word. What better way to educate consumers than to tackle that with some of the most environmentally savvy consumers—the pet owners?”
Many pet owners are young, environmentally conscious customers who, along with EPR regulations, are encouraging brand owners toward circularity, Lindberg says. Sustainability data can help flexible packaging keep pace with the “humanization of pet food,” she says. Pet food is evolving into healthier, more sustainable options as new products and players enter the market.
“There’s been such an evolution of brands that are playing in the market, and many of those new entrants have a sustainable message,” Lindberg says.
Berry Global was part of a four-way collaboration that leveraged a portfolio of ISCC PLUS-certified circular plastic. Developed in partnership with Peel Plastics Products for large-format bags for Hill’s Pet Nutrition, the packaging portfolio leveraged ExxonMobil’s Exxtend™ technology for certified circular resin.
By leveraging advanced recycling technology, the packaging achieves sustainability while meeting the exacting requirements of pet food applications. In spring 2024, Berry received a Gold Award for Sustainability in the 2024 FPA Achievement Awards for the collaboration.
“Post-consumer recycled (PCR) content would not be a fit for pet food packaging, traditionally, because of off-odors and off-colors,” Triplett says. “There are inherent qualities with mechanical PCR content that make it a challenge for the pet food segment, especially in large-format bags where performance is so critical.”
Collaborative Effort
The pet packaging LCA findings should be valid for at least three years, as the data changes from packaging formats and processes becoming more efficient, Bukowski says. Still, the category is likely to see “slow, gradual changes” as brand owners and converters improve packaging sustainability perhaps by lightweighting, reducing water consumption, or using renewable energy. “There are a lot of variables,” Bukowski says. “It’s going to depend on what the product is and the consumer benefit.”
The findings could be applied to many product categories, he adds. In the meantime, he hopes that more research into pet packaging is ahead. The more that converters understand the pros, cons, and end-of-life challenges of their products, the better they’ll be able to advise brand owners looking for advantages in a booming category about design-phase upgrades and the advantages of flexible packaging in sustainable manufacturing and recycling.
Such guidance will offer a compelling story to brand owners, especially the small to midsize companies that don’t have the capabilities to analyze sustainability metrics.
“A converter who can have that knowledge and explain it and the benefits and then have the story to go with the data—it can be a compelling argument for why a particular package format might be the right fit,” Bukowski says.
With innovation underway in downgauging, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and other packaging sustainability measures, LCAs offer “a snapshot in time,” Robison says. They should not constitute the sole basis of a 10-year decision but can contribute data points to “a glide path to where you want to go.”
Converters who are doing the innovating need to communicate with brand owners doing the testing. “We can’t come up with a solution all on our own,” Robison says. “For all of us to win, all of us have to be working together.”
A walk down the pet food aisle shows that it is “littered with new entrants,” including a rise in fresh food, Triplett says. As customers pay premium prices for premium food, the large bags that historically dominated the pet food space could be downsized and upgraded to stand-up pouches or quad seal-type bags designed to stand up for shelf appeal, he says.
Opportunities are inherent in a versatile market that is changing but where the mainstay brands “have been here for years and will continue to be here for years,” Triplett says. “In general, as American consumers tend to view their pets more and more like children, they’re willing to pay more,” he says. “It’s a premium product, and people are more willing to spend more money on their pets than even themselves sometimes.”
M. Diane McCormick is a freelance writer and editor based in York, Pennsylvania.