In a move to advance sustainability in the produce industry, fresh fruit brand Sunrays has partnered with Tipa to introduce 200,000 compostable plastic bags for its grapes, offering an eco-friendly alternative to traditional plastic packaging.
To date, Sunrays says it has diverted over 55,000 pounds of plastic from landfills since its establishment in 2017, thanks to its adoption of compostable packaging. The family-owned fresh produce importer partnered with Tipa for its transition to compostable packaging.
To learn more about Sunrays' partnership with Tipa and the challenges and opportunities for compostable innovation to meet growing consumer and retailer demand, The Packer spoke with John Paap, brand and product marketing manager for Jac. Vandenberg Inc. — which is Sunrays' parent company — and Tipa CEO Daphna Nissenbaum.
(Editor's note: The following has been edited for length and clarity.)
The Packer: John, tell us how this partnership came about, and why?
Paap: Grapes are a big commodity that we source and pack. Sustainability, for us, has been a core issue as an organization; not because of any requirements or customers, just internally, it was something that we were passionate about, so we started looking at alternatives to plastic packaging — especially for grapes, which use flexible packaging. So, we were on the hunt for something different that could fit more into our circular economy, and we found Tipa.
We started slowly packing a percentage of our grapes in compostable packaging to hopefully start a journey of transitioning all of our packaging to that eventually.
You mentioned the company's overall sustainability strategy. Have you received any consumer response or retailer response so far to the compostable packaging?
I feel like you normally hear from consumers more than retailers. Retailers hate risk — the four-letter word that no retailer likes — and with any kind of packaging alternative, it's a risk, inherently, from a cost standpoint, and then just a clearance standpoint.
On the consumer front, the feedback we've had has been very positive. People get excited to see something new that can fit their own objectives. There's obviously an increasing awareness around sustainability and doing right by not only for our personal health, but planetary health. We've seen excitement on that front.
On the retailer standpoint, historically, we don't hear anything unless it's bad. The fact that we haven't heard overwhelming comments is a good sign. It's one of those things you need to get it on the shelves and get retailers' hands on it to see how it moves through their system.
Demographics matter. Early on, we focused more on the coastal regions where there is a heightened awareness around sustainability and a deeper appreciation and understanding of that facet around packaging. So, especially in urban areas, it's been good. Still, it's penetrating more into the rural areas as well. And a lot of that has come down to education. Education is such a big piece of all of this.
That's the conundrum with plastic. Inherently, it is such an amazing material that was developed almost 100 years ago to become the type of plastic we have today, and one of the big pieces of it — in addition to being all the elements that it does provide, for shelf life, for protection, all these things — is, of course, cost. It's very cheap to produce.
When you look at alternatives through companies like Tipa, inherently the cost is going to be more because you're dealing with a totally different process. There's also the scalability element of it. So, economies of scale early on, things are always more expensive, and you're dealing with — essentially, it's a perishable — so, there's just a totally different economy behind that.
All this means there is a premium cost to it, purely from a material standpoint. And of course, that's always a hurdle with retailers, because everybody in today's economy wants to be the most competitively priced. When you try to position new packaging that not only looks different, but also is more expensive, it's a tough sell.
The way we try to position it is, "how will the consumer react?" You're talking maybe 20 cents more per bag. That price is passed on to the consumer, and I don't think most consumers are going to react morally to that. Potentially, and I don't want to speak for everybody because everybody has different thresholds for that, but it's positioning. What is the cost of supporting a material that will enter a circular economy that won't create negative impacts on the environment to the cost of your own health, because at the end of the day, this is all circular.
Plastics are a big problem. You have over 16,000 chemicals that are used to make plastic today, of which only 6% are regulated, and 4,200 of those chemicals are actually considered highly hazardous to human health.
What kind of costs are we talking about here at the end of the day? And that's just looking at personal health, because when we talk about sustainability, planetary health is always a big focus. Humans are inherently selfish, and we all care mainly about ourselves, so if we want to focus on that, we're talking about the cost to our health, our livelihood. And that's how we try to position something like this. It's a small price to pay for ensuring our health and our children's health and our family's health.
To that end, what measures are you taking to educate consumers about the benefits of compostable packaging?
On our website we provide a resource sustainability tab that walks through topics such as what is sustainability, what is composting, how do you compost, why is it important and how it fits into the model of a healthy planets and environments.
We don't expect everyone's going to hop onto the website and want to learn that, so on the packaging itself we also provide a QR code that provides additional information. Not only will it bring you to the site, but in addition to the sustainability things, it tells you where the fruit was grown; there's a whole carbon footprinting and other things. It also provides education for this packaging and how to compost that package.
Since not everybody has a backyard or a composting setup in their household, it will provide a resource to find a composter near you. If you're in a city, you don't necessarily have a backyard, so you can find an industrial composting facility to which you can send that material.
What has been promising over the last few years is that there has been an increase in compostable programs within major cities within the U.S. that is helping to facilitate people's interest and increase knowledge and awareness that there is a difference between packaging today. Now there is standard plastic packaging, which sometimes can be recycled — in this case with flexibles, less than 1% is recyclable, which the average consumer doesn't know. They just think “plastic," but that's starting to change. There's increasing awareness and understanding that there is a difference, and we're trying to assist in that education by providing as many touch points as possible, whether it be on the packaging or on the internet, for consumers to find out how to compost and what that means.
Last question: What is Sunrays vision for the future of compostable packaging?
I always say when it comes to packaging, our dream is to eliminate packaging altogether. That's always the best scenario. However, we're not naive to the fact that we're in a global economy. People want access to grapes year-round, and things like that in nature, so packaging will continue to play a role. As long as it is playing a role, we do want to move to a more nature-based packaging, packaging that can enter that circular economy, packaging that can be rid of plastic altogether, because plastic is one of those materials that's really a gateway to many of the challenges that we're facing.
From an environmental standpoint, plastic kind of goes hand in hand with the fossil challenges; whether it be related to carbon, biodiversity, waste, soil or water, plastic has penetrated every form of the environment. We're breathing it, we're eating it, we're drinking it. It's a challenge, especially within our industry, because there is a very polarizing issue surrounding plastic. A lot of people say, well, there's no other way we can do our business of fresh produce without plastic playing such a critical role in shelf life, logistics and all these things, but I usually counter that saying, you know, if we're truly serious about sustainability in the environment and human health — I'm not saying that we can turn it off tonight or tomorrow, but we do have to acknowledge the fact that plastic has to be transitioned away from to truly achieve that circular system that we want and to get to a point where toxicity is not penetrating every form of life.
Nissenbaum: Compostable materials have been in the markets for years now — I would say 20 years — and compostable polymers, compostable raw materials, they're not as strong or durable as conventional plastic. So, what we did at Tipa is invented new films. Just imagine rolls of films that have the same properties and the same capabilities as conventional plastic. That was our goal.
Those materials will provide all the good things that John just mentioned about plastic within the films that we invented and will perform the same on existing plastic machinery — I mean, existing machinery that the market uses today — and therefore we can package a lot of things. One of them is fresh produce.
When we talk about fresh produce, there's the element of permeability of water vapor. The permeability of compostable materials is much more, because the water vapor can be transformed much easier than through conventional plastic, and therefore, we provide longer shelf life. It depends on the exact product that is packaged, but usually the shelf life is longer with compostable materials.
Is Tipa seeing an increased demand for compostable packaging, and if so, what's driving this interest?
Yes. People are understanding what compostability is and understanding the problems of using plastic — the health side of it and the environmental side of it. We're looking for good solutions or solutions that are as close as can be to nature's creation. Therefore, we're looking for composable solutions.
Lately, I think the market is much more educated; people understand that recyclability is very limited to specific packaging ... so more and more companies are seeking other solutions. Among those are compostable solutions.
Specifically speaking about flexible packaging, that's a space for compostable solutions. People are seeking other solutions for packages that cannot be recycled, and it's mainly flexible packing by the way, so we see this change in the markets, and we see a big change in North America.
Sunrays says its grape bio bags are certified home compostable, made from 20% bio-based plastic and 80% fully compostable fossil-based polymers.
(Photo courtesy of Sunrays)
(Photo courtesy of Sunrays)
by Jill Dutton, Dec 24, 2024