THE executive director of OPRL (On-Pack Recycling Label) has hailed the ‘amazing’ levels of innovation within the packaging industry, as businesses attempt to meet their environmental responsibilities and tackle the Climate Emergency.
OPRL was founded some 12 years ago in a bid to deliver a standardised and easy-to-understand label on packaging that consumers would recognise and, in turn, result in increased and correct reuse and recycling of materials.
Over 700 members across a wide variety of sectors have come on board – including more than 200 since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Margaret Bates, executive director of OPRL, told Packaging Scotland that the organisation has been through three iterations of labels over the years, the most recent being the move to ‘Recycle/Don’t Recycle’.
“That change has been really successful,” Margaret explained. “We’ve found that simple move to a binary label caused a 5% increase in customer recognition in less than 12 months. One of the things which is particularly good about that is when we compare the levels of understanding of our level with other labels, we always come out top.”
Recent moves include the launch of OPRL’s Refill labels, reflecting the need for the circular economy in packaging.
The organisation is currently strongly focused on legislative changes including EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility), DRS (Deposit Return Schemes), and the Plastic Packaging Tax.
“People think labelling is a really simple thing, and it’s not,” Margaret added. “OPRL do not launch a label that hasn’t first been through our technical advisory committee, but also then been consumer tested to see what people actually think of it.
“The label we speculatively tested for DRS in Scotland got over 80% recognition. People thought it was clear, they knew what they were being asked to do, and said they were likely to do it – which interestingly was higher than the amount of people who knew what DRS was.”
At the time of interview, OPRL’s membership stood at 724. Margaret attributes the surge in membership in recent years to the fact that businesses are very keen to do the right thing, and the use of the OPRL label gives them peace of mind in the knowledge that the label they’re using has been thoroughly tested and is widely understood by consumers.
OPRL research has shown that consumers are increasingly looking for the OPRL or Recycle label when they’re disposing of their packaging, and when purchasing goods in stores.
Reflecting on some of the upcoming changes, Margaret believes the packaging sector is ‘ready, willing and able’ to cope with new legislation, but everyone needs to know what the framework and criteria are.
“We’re still having issues, for example, with what’s in and out of scope of the Plastic Packaging Tax,” she explained. “People don’t really know what’s happening with DRS or EPR. They are having to make long term decisions when they can’t be sure they’re the right decisions.
“I think sometimes governments underestimate how long it takes to change packaging to redesign it. I would say generally that most people want to have recyclable or reusable packaging, but they need to know what these criteria are. That’s one of the reasons we’re working with the materials organisations and others such as INCPEN and the local authorities to try and make sure the criteria that we’re using and the criteria that will be available to the scheme administrator are going to be robust going forward.
“When we change a label, we give people usually three years to integrate it into their packaging because that’s how often the refresh rate is. We’re really hoping that governments will understand this when they’re talking to businesses about packaging. The longer the glide path to put a change in, the cheaper it is. One of the things that stands out in the consultations is lots of discussion about cost and not much about value. We really need to integrate value into our decision-making process.”
Common sense dictates that having a label consumers trust and can easily identify is of vital importance when it comes to meeting environmental ambitions.
Margaret revealed one of the issues OPRL was concerned about during the EPR consultation was the prospect of there being more than one recycle label.
The potential for clear labelling to provide a multitude of benefits is backed up by research. Margaret highlighted Defra’s Impact Assessment which accompanied the 2021 packaging EPR consultation, which indicated that a labelling scheme would cost around £82.5 million over ten years. However, the estimated benefits accrued means a scheme would only need to reduce annual rejects at material recovery facilities by around 0.1% of total material collected for recycling to provide a net benefit.
Regardless of cost implications, Margaret is of the view that the majority of companies now have a very clear understanding of what they need to be doing, and what their consumers demand from them.
She paid tribute to the packaging industry for the role it has played in improving the environmental credentials of a wide variety of products.
“I think the packaging sector has an amazing level of innovation,” she added. “One of the things we’re careful about with our label and our rules, is to make sure that when we change our rules, we allow space for innovation. I would never have been able to predict the level of innovation that is happening in packaging. I honestly think it’s amazing, and often the consumers don’t even see what’s happening. They don’t notice that actually that material is totally different from what it used to be, or the lifetime of the stuff they’re buying is now two weeks longer. They just don’t see it, and actually I think that’s something the packaging industry should be very proud of.
“Packaging gets absolutely slated and vilified. I did a little survey some time ago, just on Facebook, where I asked for examples of good packaging and bad packaging. The good packaging examples were all low or no packaging but that doesn’t work for everything. We need packaging. Our lives would be so different. Can you imagine taking your lateral flow tests if it didn’t come in any packaging, or the confidence in the results if the delivery driver had turned up with it in their hands?”
One issue which is gaining more traction is ‘greenwashing’, which relates to overstated or unsubstantiated claims of environmental credentials. The publication of the Green Claims Code, designed to protect consumers from misleading claims, has helped focus minds.
“I think businesses are going to be a lot more hesitant to make environmental marketing claims when they can see a direct way that might come back and bite them,” Margaret said. “That’s why I think it’s so important that anyone who runs/administers or does anything else around labelling is independent.
“Some of the ‘plastic-free’ claims need to be very careful. Also, businesses need to consider why they’re becoming plastic-free, because quite often the element of being plastic-free is now meaning that you’ve reduced your shelf-life or it might not provide the same service that the packaging previously did.
“At OPRL we are materials agnostic. We totally get that there is a right material for a right part of packaging. There isn’t one type of packaging that fits everything. Instead of vilifying certain materials, we’ve just got to make sure that we use each material in the right context and to its best use – and try to increase levels of reusability or refillability and also the levels of recycling.”
