Podcast Episode 222: Food Packaging: Recycling, Sustainability & Innovations – Dr. David Smith

Welcome to Sound Bites – hosted by registered dietitian nutritionist, Melissa Joy Dobbins. Let’s delve into the science, the psychology and the strategies behind good food and nutrition.

 

[00:00:00] Melissa: Hello. And welcome back to the sound bites podcast. Today’s episode is about food packaging from innovations in packaging to sustainable packaging, to the challenges and realities with recycling, and also a little bit about nutrition and labeling – health claims, clean labels, consumer insights, anything that we can dive into with my expert guest today.

My guest is Dr. David Smith. He’s an R and D leader for numerous fortune 100 companies with responsibility for iconic brands, such as Campbell soup, lays, Oreo, hot pockets, V8, planters, and many others, including some non-food brands, such as Neutrogena and Listerine. David’s teams brought many new consumer driven innovations to the market place such as resealable cookie packaging, goldfish, natural colors, the nuts and cardiovascular disease qualified health claim, lean pockets, and many packaging innovations. David earned an Ms. MPH and PhD in food science from Rutgers university and a BS in food science from Cornell university. Welcome to the show Dr. David Smith.

[00:01:20] David: Thank you.

[00:01:20] Melissa: Should I call you Dr. Smith or David? David’s fine. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. You have an incredibly interesting career and background in food science, from nutrition to packaging. As we talked before the interview, there’s so much that we could touch on and there’s a lot of ground I’d like to cover today, but obviously there’s way more than we can get to in 45 minutes or so.

But I would love to find out from you, first of all, what led you to this field of study in the first place?

[00:01:54] David: Well food science is interesting. And even today, most high school students don’t know about food science. It’s typically only a curriculum in the land grant institutions, the larger agricultural based schools.

So usually there’s maybe one in a state at most, and people just don’t really have a great understanding of what food science is, but it’s essentially an applied science related to food and you get to do lots of different things. And that’s really what attracted me. I was studying chemistry and like, okay.

I wasn’t thrilled with the CS and HS and OS on a piece of paper, but you know, I like science and a Dean at Cornell actually shared with me this thing called food science and said. I think what you’re talking about is applied science and we have a great food science program, and we like to think it’s the best one in the country.

And I looked at it and said, boy, this is really interesting. And and it was, so I went into the food science program at Cornell. Graduated from that. And as you mentioned, I got graduate degrees at Rutgers, and then I’ve been lucky enough to – privileged enough to work on just some amazing iconic brands throughout my career with just some wonderful companies.

And it is a privilege to work on some of these products because they are so, so well loved by consumers. And really, so important to the food industry, to the

[00:03:17] Melissa: consumer. Well, that’s interesting because that’s very similar. I think to my story, with how I got interested in nutrition, I was studying chemistry.

I, I loved science, but it was just not really that exciting. And it was learning about nutrition being that applied aspect and really connecting those dots and making it just so much more interesting and fulfilling. Speaking of interesting, I’ve been interested in this topic and it’s sort of this umbrella of topics, I guess, for some time, but getting more interested in packaging and recycling – just the more I learn, the more questions I have, and I had the pleasure of seeing you present on the topic earlier this year. And then I also attended the, if Ft Institute of food technologists First conference and expo in Chicago this summer, which I just found it fascinating. Every session that I went to had a panel of food scientists on it, which was really interesting to hear all the diverse perspectives. But a lot of the conversations focused on food packaging and sustainability.

So I walked away with this, like, okay, I’ve gotta do an episode on this topic. I thought of you. And so I’m just thrilled to bring you on the show. And like I said, there’s so much we could touch on. I may turn this into a series of episodes, but maybe a good place to start would be with recycling. I know that there are different packaging materials, and certainly there’s different challenges or pros and cons.

But if you could just kinda walk us through some of the different materials, the pros and cons, keeping in mind that as consumers, we have questions and we want to do a good job, but it’s kind of confusing. So start us with the recycling aspect.

[00:05:22] David: Sure. So packaging is another area that’s very complex and very broad, and it’s kind of followed me around my career and I’ve had some jobs in packaging and done some great stuff there as well.

And when we talk about sustainability, Recycling and those things today, we tend to think about plastic, but if we go back and use some of the more the basic materials that have been around longer, we actually do a pretty good job. So paper is an example almost all the corrugated in the United States is recycled board.

And we do a great job of recycling corrugated, and the industry is really well. set up to handle that – glass is another one that’s reasonably well set up to handle recycled material. The best example, I think, would be metal cans, both aluminum cans that are typical use for beverages and the steel cans that are typical use for all the products you get in the grocery store, like canned beans and soups and things like that.

And they just do a terrific job and the numbers are really high in levels of recycling and recyclability. The aluminum industry has a wonderful history of recycling aluminum for many years, and the same with steel cans. So those are really great examples where it’s highly recycleable.

So you can reuse almost everything. And the industry has done a really good job of doing that. Now, frankly, the industry’s done a great job because it saves money. So they’re recycling, the sustainability. Oh, that’s not new to any packaging engineer that’s been around for a while. Because those things are great cost savings programs.

But again it’s a really good example and we tend to use the negative and the issues that we have with some of the materials, but certainly the cans and paper particularly are terrific. One of the things I did bring up at the conference someone asked was BPA and all the negativity on that.

[00:07:24] Melissa: BPA in cans?

[00:07:26] David: Yeah. So BPA is a processing aid used to modify the coating on the inside of cans, but essentially it’s gone. I can tell you because I was leading research and development at Campbell’s at the time when we were getting rid of BPA. With our supplier. And how long ago was that? Oh, 10 years ago.

Okay. And I would say today there’s probably little if any and probably no BPA use in the United States in metal cans. Now that said the safety was there wasn’t terrible safety. I think it got a bad rap. It got some negative news and they got some I don’t know if hysteria is the right word, but certainly some negativity in the publicity area and it wasn’t worth it to leave it in so we had other solutions and it was costly and we had a very big investment, certainly companies like Campbells and ConAgra and Bush’s and the other guys who use a lot of cans, had a very big investment to make those changes.

Yeah. But they did because that’s what the consumers wanted. And there was a public perception that we weren’t doing the right. And I think the same on sustainability, those packages are terrific, but I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to do a much better job on a lot of the materials we use every day. In getting those recycled.

[00:08:47] Melissa: So let me ask you then, cuz my understanding was that the FDA supported the safety of BPA in the way that it was approved for use and food containers and packaging. This BPA issue reminds me of what happened with RBST. My regular listeners will know that I did my master’s research on growth hormones in cows milk back in the early nineties.

And it’s not a product, but it’s a technology that was not well understood. It was verified safe. And when I say not well understood, I mean, not well understood by consumers. And so there was a fear factor and there was a pushback and essentially it’s a technology that’s not used today because of that.

So it reminds me of that.

[00:09:32] David: I think the parallels are right on there. It got to the point where it was getting so much negative publicity that wasn’t scientifically validated. That it just got to the point where everybody said it’s not worth it anymore to fight it.

[00:09:45] Melissa: Give the consumers what they want and.

[00:09:48] David: And just tell consumers we’re taking it out because we were able to – not cheaply, but we were able to find an alternative solution.

[00:09:55] Melissa: Interesting. And now, so you mentioned also then sustainability and we are gonna talk about packaging innovations and sustainability in a little bit more depth, but you were kind of making a connection between the sustainability with recycling?

[00:10:12] David: Yeah, I think the two are tied together. I certainly everybody’s got the blue bin or whatever color it is when you put your stuff there and you think you’re doing the right thing.

And I, I think there’s a significant issue in the municipalities. There was a terrific article – I believe it was either yesterday or over the weekend in the wall street journal in that they’re allowing this phrase ‘widely recyclable’ for polypropylene and polypropylene is one of the many plastics used in packaging.

Polypropylene is a little bit rigid if you will. So a lot of its applications are for tubs and bottles and jars and probably the most widely known as the yogurt cup or the butter container. Those are polypropylene. Some of the consumer slash consumer product slash industrial support groups have lobbied to get this term widely recyclable in talking about polypropylene.

Yet the estimates that I’ve seen for their recyclable recycling of polypropylene are down just around, less than 3% in United States. So there’s a lot of confusion in all of these terminologies. The biggest I think issue that people need to understand is the biggest hurdle we have is not necessarily in materials, in science, in technology of utilization of reusing materials.

The biggest issue we have is municipalities. In the United States there’s getting upwards of 10,000 different programs in municipalities, no federal oversight. And they pretty much set their own rules and set their own expenditures and therefore have their own capabilities. So that when you put stuff in the blue bins, if you will and you’re feeling good about it. Oh, gee. You know what, when it comes down to it, you go visit the municipalities recycling center, a huge portion of that goes in the trash because they can’t handle it correctly. And the CPG industry, I think, is really doing a fantastic job, trying to change that, trying to make it easier.

A great example that I just read about was Coke. Sprite is a large brand in Coca-Cola’s portfolio and they have made the green bottle for Sprite, iconic. But when you throw that green bottle, now it’s made of the same material – that’s typically P E T it’s called polyester And that’s what those bottles are made of because they have the right properties of rigidity and barrier and all that.

So those are P E T bottles and the clear bottle for regular Coke. And the green bottle for Sprite are the same material. One just has some color agent in it. But what that coloring agent does is really eliminate the ability of these municipalities to handle the green. So typically those green bottles get thrown away because there’s not enough of them to create the volume.

So they don’t want to be bothered with another material. So they just recycle the clear polyester bottles and toss the other ones. Some, maybe some of the larger ones can collect enough to make it worth their while but there was a lot of issues. So coke just said, Look – you know what it doesn’t really affect the product.

It is something we’ve certainly invested a lot in, from marketing, from advertising, from shelf displays and all that, but they were willing to say, you know what, it’s not the best thing for the environment. So let’s just get out of that green bottle. So I don’t know if they’re a hundred percent out now, but that’s certainly the commitment that Coke has made to say, we’re not gonna have the green bottle anymore.

We’re just gonna put everything in the clear bottle. They’ll probably put a green label on it. Yeah. Differentiate it from Coke and all that, but they’re doing the right thing.. And that’s not cheap, people think, oh gee, it’s no big deal-  changes for a company that the volume that coke produces and sell those changes are expensive and time consuming and lots of effort.

So it’s not just the haphazard. Oh, okay. Well, we’ll take it out. Many people work many hours costing many dollars to get that. Because Coke says hey, we’re being a better citizen by doing that.

[00:14:42] Melissa: That’s huge. And I know you’ve got some stories that I wanna hear about just the brand loyalty aspect of changes like that.

But just to make it clear, the reason these municipalities have problems, because they would have to handle the green bottle differently than the clear ones. And because the volume wasn’t there to create another way to handle those, they’re just throwing ’em out.

[00:15:06] David: out. Right. So they don’t do a good job of being able to handle multiple colors.

And in the recycling of those plastics, you really do need to keep that separate. Obviously for polyester bottles, the biggest volume is clear. So they’re really good at handling that. But when you get some of these other colors, like the green or some other oddball colors that other manufacturers can use it gets challenging and it’s the same issue for other plastics as well for polypropylene and polyethylene, for their work streams, the added colors create complexity that these municipalities are just not capable of handling. They’re not funded to do it – again they’re all separate. There’s no overlying overarching regulation that says here’s what you have to do. So they just say, okay, well, you know what? We’re a small municipality. It would take me a week to get enough green plastic bottles to create a bale that I can ship out and I just don’t have the way to store that. I have no way to handle that. So we just don’t do it. And they send it to the landfill. So there’s a lot of that type of thing going on. In the handling of materials.

[00:16:23] Melissa: Right. And you described me perfectly earlier when you’re saying you’ve got this blue bin or whatever the recycling bin color is, and I’m, I feel good filling that up.

I mean, of course I try to reduce my consumption as well, because that’s part of the whole cycle. But when I’m putting things into that recycling bin and then learning like hmmm, just because I put those things in the bin doesn’t necessarily mean that they ended up getting recycled and with the green bottle I heard another example that I think sounds similar is that some municipalities, like you have these takeout containers they’re like the shell, like the clam shells – the top is clear and the bottom is black and some municipalities didn’t recycle the black containers because their sensors couldn’t see them on the conveyor belt. So these are the types of things that the average consumer isn’t really aware of that are challenges with the different municipalities.

Like you said, they’re all in their own silos. And until we get some sort of which we’ll talk about a little bit, I think you might have some suggestions, but get some more coordinated efforts to handle different types of recycling, then it we’re gonna continue to have some of these challenges.

[00:17:44] David: Yeah. You had mentioned the talk I gave earlier this year and it was in a hotel and it was in the Ritz Carlton and they had a published a two page memo on how they’re so responsible in recycling and how they have the blue bins in everybody’s room and every conference room and all the things that they’re doing as a hotel to reduce and consume and all that reduce their consumption.

So I just pulled everybody. I was speaking in the morning and I said, who’s got a coffee cup in their hand, and I know about three quarters of the audience, and I said, and you guys are all gonna throw them in the blue bins when you’re done. Right? And they go, of course. And it’s another issue. The fact that those cups have a plastic lining in there, otherwise they would leak, right?

If you just took a paper cup and put hot coffee in it, it’s gonna make a mess. So they have a plastic lining in there and the exact same thing happens in, in the municipal paper recycling stream. They get kicked out and they go to a landfill. Now, again Starbucks is trying and they helped invest in a, in Madison, Wisconsin was one example but it costs four and a half million dollars for a scanner and all the equipment needed to separate that out so that they can do that.

You know that time six, eight months ago, there were just five locations in the United States that could handle those plastic lined paper cups. So everybody thinks, oh, it’s paper. Oh, I’ll just toss it in the recycle bin and it’ll go to the recycling and it doesn’t, it goes to the landfill stream.

So again, the limitations of our municipalities, frankly, our investment in America, in, in municipality capabilities prevents that from being recycled because it does take extra steps and work and technology.

[00:19:34] Melissa: Right and I think just even understanding better what our own communities offer. I just found out from a neighbor the other day that our community now offers composting bins.

And I was like, I missed that memo. So I’m gonna look into that and I was visiting a friend in Minneapolis and we were in this restaurant in the park and I was just really impressed with the signage on – You go to a lot of places where there’s like, even the airport or whatever, there’s three different.

There’s the trash and the recycling and the compostable or whatever. And I’m like, well, I don’t know what goes into which container or what, which goes into which hole. And this park in Minneapolis had very good signage and instructions on like pictures of what goes where, and it’s my understanding from some of the conversations at the IFT conference, I went to where some of the CPG companies are getting more specific about I’ve even seen on packages take the lid off or put the lid on, which I don’t understand that. Maybe you know what that’s all about or this part can be recycled, but this part can’t and using pictures to help explain that. Have you seen it anything from a CPG standpoint regarding education on recycling?

[00:20:50] David: Listen, I’ve worked for wonderful companies that all are very responsible CPG companies, and want to do the right thing and want to help the environment and are willing to invest a lot of money. There’s a lot of consumer research and evaluation for things that you’re talking about. I’m very happy to see there’s a lot of talk about doing some of the education in schools, cuz I think kids will be the best. I think kids are typically better with being responsible about this stuff. So I think that’s a great investment for us to teach the young folks about how to do this and how to do this better.

And I can assure you that I know a lot of companies are really investing heavily in trying to figure out how to do this better, because again it’s something consumers want and there’s a strong desire on these companies to give consumers what they want and to differentiate from the competitors and say, Hey, we’re more responsible.

They’ve clearly gotten the message that consumers want to be more responsible, more sustainable, and we understand. Consumers need help in doing that. So there will be more and more, as you mentioned and more ways to get that the number system is not robust enough.

Clearly there’s a lot of misnomers out there. Simple things like a paper cup are really I think most people won’t realize, although if they sat there and thought about it, they would, but they’re not realizing, gee, I’m putting that in a recycle. Not knowing it’s coming right out and going to the landfill so those things are out there.

And I do think at some point – I don’t want to get into a political discussion, but we do need to invest more in our capabilities as a country in handling this. I think Europe is typically doing a much better job of making this a priority and investing in capabilities and municipalities to handle the waste streams more effectively to lead this.

[00:22:49] Melissa: Yes. Somebody at the IFT conference who was presenting said, had we invested the amount of money into the infrastructure, the circular economy, which I learned some buzzwords I’d like you to share definitions with our listeners, but they said if we had done as much investment there, as we’ve done on innovative packaging, we wouldn’t be in this situation today.

And it’s interesting. It like you said, the CPG companies are doing a great job constantly trying to improve, but the onus has kind of been put on the consumer and then that lack of understanding. It’s kind of backwards, like, okay. The consumer wants to do the right thing. They don’t always know, like with this multiple materials in the packing.

And then at the end of the day, it’s whatever the municipality can handle. And I’m wondering it sounds like what you’re saying is like the aluminum beverage cans, the steel food cans, those do pretty well. They’re recyclable and the recycling rates are pretty high. Glass. You said pretty good too.

Although it’s my understanding, some of that has to be like ground down and recreated. But is plastics is that where things got really problematic? There’s so many different kinds of plastic and that, like you said, there’s sturdier plastic. There’s this more there’s a whole slew of different materials.

[00:24:16] David: Just some numbers. I wouldn’t take them exactly, but they’re pretty close relatively. So the glass recycling rate is about 33% in the United States, which is okay. About the same for the PET bottles it’s a little less. Steel cans are 65% and aluminum cans are over 50%. Those numbers are okay. They, I wouldn’t say they’re stellar.

They’re recyclability again is really great of the paper and glass and aluminum and steel. I think the complexity of plastic is a major issue. Just one example that the industry is just now starting to get solutions are pumps. So pumps are very convenient. For a little bit, but certainly consumer products soaps detergents, cosmetics hand creams there’s walk down your typical target or Walmart. And you’re gonna see thousands of products with pumps. Pumps are typically made of multiple plastics and metal.  spring. So there’s typically a metal spring inside and at least two, if not three different plastics in those pumps.

So if you take the bottle that’s finished, which is hard enough, that’s a whole nother discussion. It’s getting the last of the material out of the bottle with a pump. But you just if you toss that in the recycle bin, it’s going to the landfill because there’s no way to handle that. Now there is starting to see technology of single component materials in pumps so that plastic can be recycled so that, that can just get tossed into the recycle bin appropriately.

But we’re not there yet. And that’s gonna take some time for that to get there. But you know, you balance the convenience and premiumness and accessibility availability that consumers want in a pump with what it does in the sustainability realm and trying to figure all that out and do it quickly and get manufacturers to figure out how to make a pump that doesn’t have three or four components.

[00:26:28] Melissa: Right. Things you don’t think about unless you’re Dr. David Smith. Let’s transition into packaging innovations and sustainability and some of this recycling conversation might still crop up during this conversation, but this is where I think maybe some more of the consumer insights and some of the stories about some of the brands that you’ve worked with will also be a good opportunity to share some of that because of your background.

Including experience in product, processing, packaging innovation. I really wanna hear more about this kind of where things are today with packaging innovations overall. And of course, sustainability is just a really huge focus right now.

[00:27:14] David: Yeah. I think it’s become certainly one of the major focuses of packaging for CPG companies.

It’s still a big hurdle in that just one example is so PCR is post-consumer recycled content. So we’ll go to polypropylene which we talked about. There is material available. That’s the post-consumer recycled content for plastics manufacturers to add that and the same with polyester and the same with polypropolene.

So they have the ability to use the recycled material appropriately to make new packages so it doesn’t affect the package much. There might be some appearance wise but from a functional standpoint, the plastic manufacturers I think have done an excellent job of being able to handle this PCR content to the point of some of them can put in a hundred percent.

Wow. The issue is because of our municipality lack of capabilities,, that’s not just not as available as we would like, and it’s more expensive. So it’s a little counterintuitive, right. But if you want to use, say 100% PCR polyester for your bottle. And I’ll use an example of a manufacturer. It’s a nice thing.

So I’ll talk about them, but Method is a wide ranging brand of consumer products for everything from soaps and foams and detergents. And they do. I think they do a very nice job. Clearly they invest in their packaging design because they look kind of pretty. The products are in nice colors and all the packages are clear And most of your listeners may not realize that package is a hundred percent PCR. Yeah. Or at least it was I they’ve been purchased since my material my information they were bought by I believe SC Johnson. If I’m not mistaken so they may have changed that. I don’t know, but it’s an investment.

So method chose to make an investment. so that they could use 100% PCR content plastics. And they used very premium ones because they were very clear, just as clear as Virgin P E T is So they wanted to give that quality image to their products, but they chose to do that. And they chose to do that at cost.

They had to cut into their margin to do that, but they felt like that was something that their brand, their company, needed to do that helps build their brand identity and all that. So the technology is out there. The question is, will the consumer pay and frankly, a lot of the research that I’ve done on the brands that I’ve worked on, the consumer research folks have come back and said they won’t pay. Consumers, say they would like more recycled content.

They would like a package that’s more sustainable. Would they pay more for it? The answer typically is no. So I think it’s very challenging for companies to say, gee, I’m gonna take a margin hit to provide a more sustainable solution that the consumer is okay with, but they’re not passionate about it because they won’t pay for it.

So that kind of stuff has to change in our overall. And that’s a big issue. That’s not something from a technology standpoint that we can focus on. But I do think it’s something out there that I think your listeners should know about, but there are tons of programs out there to try to get solutions that consumers might accept. There’s a lot of reusable solutions. I think Coke is testing a plastic bottle that can be reused. So built much as when carbonated beverages were in glass bottles. In the beginning, those glass bottles came back and they cleaned them and reuseed them. So they’re trying to do that with plastic.

The big advantage there for folks who don’t know is that the weight differential in a plastic bottle versus the glass bottle is huge. And as these products are shipped pretty great distances that costs a ton of money. So if you just thought about a two liter bottle being glass, yeah. That will be very heavy.

Not just unwieldy as a consumer, but just think about shipping it. So they do wanna stay in the plastic because it’s been such a good solution for them.

[00:31:44] Melissa: Just a quick question. Those two liter bottles did used to be glass didn’t they? Or were they never glass?

[00:31:51] David: I’m not sure if there were that. Two liter bottle in glass, cuz it’s pretty large.

Yeah. Certainly one liter quart size and those were certainly glass. I’m not sure if they ever got to a two liter bottle of glass, just because the weight it might have been in like from a restaurant usage or something like that. Somebody who couldn’t go all the way to the automated solutions that they also, but I’m just curious, but it is a pretty hefty bottle.

Yeah. I certainly wouldn’t wanna see that around the house with kids around with a bottle like that, you can break a toe . But they are looking at solutions of that. I think there’s lots of solutions and more and more brands globally are looking at refillable solutions where you buy the package and then you get a refill. Now I can tell you, I spent some time at Johnson & Johnson, Neutrogena and Listerine. And we had one product in our whole portfolio of a $15 billion business at J and J just to have one. Now I know there’s a number of others in testing. I just saw they released information that they’re testing that for Listerine where they sell you the little small bottle that’s now of concentrate. Yes. You pour that in your big bottle and dilute it. So they’re testing that. I believe it’s in, I think in the us. So, so lots of these big brands and big companies are committed to it and trying things. And again, these are expensive propositions for them to test these aren’t cheap to set up.

So I hope folks appreciate the commitment that these large companies are making. We bash CPG companies a lot, but here they’re really trying to figure out the solution that works for them and for the consumer.

[00:33:30] Melissa: Right. Well, and they do a lot of consumer insight testing or what is it? Consumer.

[00:33:35] David: Consumer research.

[00:33:36] Melissa: Consumer research, right.

[00:33:37] David: Oh, absolutely. Talking to consumers all the time. And now with online solutions, it’s even more because it was much more expensive to do it face to face. So one of the positives of all this online stuff, but you know, they’re looking at all sorts of return crate and pallets and all this stuff, consumers don’t typically see that goes on in food production.

For example. So there’s a big push to make those reusable cleanable returnable. So there’s a number of companies that are testing those type of materials to replace the, sort of ship it in a large box and throw that away or ship it in a big giant plastic tote and throw that away and those kinds of things.

But there’s a big investment in that kind of stuff. And there’s everything from plant derived coatings, the whole plant-based plastics is another area that it’s very controversial because it sounds like it’s a good solution, but then when you grow corn to make plastic, you’re taking that away from the agricultural food usage, that land and those efforts.

Is that a good thing to do? No one’s really figured that out perfectly yet. There’s a lot of research into that. There’s a lot of really good organizations that are trying to do the right thing. Ellen MacArthur foundation, one sustainable packaging coalition, recycling partnerships. So there’s a number of folks out there that are really trying to understand what works best for consumers and industry.

What we can do. So a lot of companies are making big commitments to reduce their packaging and not just packaging, but complete environmental impact. One of the things that one of the companies I work with did a fuel cell for energy that saved just tons from an emission standpoint, in a carbon carbon negative situation.

So there’s a lot of commitments out there and work out there. People put timing of 2025 and things like that. Those are gonna be challenging to get there and get out of these carbon based materials that we’re using. So I think we’re in a very evolving situation and I think the consumer products companies are really trying to figure out the cost of some of that.

And they’re doing everything they possibly can.

[00:36:03] Melissa: Yes. I mean, I’ve noticed we’ve seen a huge decrease in some of this overpackaging. Still see it from time to time. And I think during the pandemic and we were ordering things from Amazon versus going to the store and seeing all this packaging that we’re trying to recycle or throw away.

And in looking more at the sustainable packaging, but to your point, there’s a cost to that. I think another thing that people might not be aware of and maybe this is taking a little bit of a step back, but just the role of packaging in shelf life and decreasing food waste. You could speak to maybe it’s the thickness of the plastic.

If you make it thinner, then that lettuce salad isn’t gonna last another day or two or whatever. I mean, I’m just making that up, but.

[00:36:53] David: Oh, listen, there’s a ton of science in packaging, science and engineering, and a lot of time and effort in evaluations of products, the last thing any company would want, any CPG company would want is for you to get a product that disappoints. They want you to get that same experience whenever you buy the product, wherever you buy the product. So obviously packaging has a huge impact on that. And it’s part of the reason we didn’t have plastic bottles earlier was because the distribution system wouldn’t allow for it because the plastic bottles – the soda doesn’t keep the carbonation as long as glass bottle, for example. But so they had to up their distribution capabilities to allow for that. Wow. That’s why aluminum is such a great solution for them. because it really provides lots of product protection for a very long time.

And it’s very light, all that. So.

[00:37:51] Melissa: And recyclable.

[00:37:52] David: And very recyclable.

[00:37:53] Melissa: And high recycling rates

[00:37:55] David: So they’re looking at all kinds of materials, but they’re, as they should be they’re very protective. I can tell you one of the things my team did many years ago was changed the Oreo package.

[00:38:05] Melissa: I was just gonna ask you about that.

[00:38:08] David: Now that was a long time ago. It was. A cellophane bag with a brown corrugated piece of paper underneath three stacks of Oreos that believe it or not for the largest cookie brand in the world, they were packed by hand every single pack. So my team had the solution, how to automate that, how to use different materials, how to use resealable materials.

The consumer loved Oreos – hated the package So we had the best cookie in the world. We had the worst package. everyone bought that bag of Oreos, opened it up and then had to put in a Ziploc band. We had the solution, but I can tell you the biggest hurdle for us was internally to get our manufacturing team to say, okay, you can test something with Oreo because when you have a brand like Oreo and there’s Coke, and many of these, iconics probably not even the right word. You don’t mess with it. You don’t mess with it. And as we should have been Nabisco was very carefully and it was Nabisco at that point. Very careful about any change, sun Oreo. They finally gave us permission to do a test in one of the bakeries.

And we did a test and it was so successful and it enabled us to then work with a partner. To create the current package that’s resealable. Genius. Which consumers adore. Yeah. Now we’re talking about sustainability. It’s not the best . The tray itself is recyclable. It’s polypropylene, I believe. And the material outside is not, it’s a multi laminate material against to protect the product and make sure that you get a fresh, crunchy, creamy, oreo.

So that material is not necessarily sustainable and reusable and recyclable, but on the plus side, they’re doing many things to reduce the impact of that. Right? So it’s very thin material and they’re looking at solutions that might become more sustainable with that. So it’s a balance, as I mentioned earlier, about giving consumers what they want in a product and a package for convenience for reliability, for protection, for shopability, for transport, and many other reasons at the right costs with as little environmental impact as possible. So trifecta – it’s a highly complex area. That last one is something we’re just starting, so when somebody took packaging engineering as a curriculum in school, 10 years ago, there wasn’t much talk about sustainability, environmental impact, where now I can tell you it’s a significant portion.

[00:40:44] Melissa: Yeah. Like I said, at the IFT conference, you couldn’t go to a session without sustainability and the environment coming up.

[00:40:51] David: Yeah. And it’s not just the package. It’s the food, the product. How we make things and how we ship things. And is it the best model to have one giant factory service the whole United States?

Or do we go back to the way it used to be, where there are lots of small factories and things are more regionalized. Those things are being evaluated as we do that.

[00:41:11] Melissa: Yeah. I would also love to hear your story about working on the nuts and cardiovascular disease health claim. Was this the first nutrition health claim?

[00:41:22] David: It was the first qualified health claim that FDA ever allowed. It’s a very interesting story. I’ll give you some insight into what, what happens in a big company. So I get a new role in, in, at the time it was Nabisco as the head of research and development and operations for planters, and it’s just a wonderful brand.

It’s owned by Hormel now, but it’s a wonderful product and really great heritage and super quality and just a really fun marketing and Mr. Peanut and all that. So it was really a great opportunity for me, but I can tell you my very first day, My nutrition person comes into my office with a stack of paper is probably about four feet high and slams them on the table and says, I got all this great data and the marketing guys don’t wanna listen to me.

I’m like, okay, because if you go in there with all your great data, they’re not gonna listen to you because they don’t understand. And they’re not thinking the consumer would understand. So it’s not important. So we actually were able to get some market research funding and we actually did some consumer research and we knew some of this.

We knew that people love nuts, but the perception was that well, nuts have a lot of fat, so I don’t want to eat them. As a nutrition person this, we go very much from the it’s either good or bad. There’s no in between. And at that time, fat was bad and a few years later salt was bad.

And I can tell you stories about that. So with the fat focus, it was, well, wait a minute there’s actually good fats and the monounsaturated fats that predominate in nuts are actually good for you. And there’s data to that. So we did all kinds of research into what would be compelling for consumers. And we learned that it would be very compelling if you could tell consumers that it was good for their heart to eat serving of nuts every day, they would buy more nuts and eat more nuts. There you go. And they would buy more planters nuts because they would believe and trust us if Mr. Peanut told them that they would trust that. If some other brand that wasn’t as well known or well thought of told them that they wouldn’t necessarily believe that.

So it really makes a difference who it’s coming from. So we said, okay, let’s get working on that. And it’s gonna take about three years to get a health claim. We thought we could do it because we knew the monounsaturated fats do have a positive effect on cardiovascular disease, but there was only the regular traditional health claim that takes a long time, a lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of testing.

To do. So we’ve said it’s gonna take three years and a chunk of dollars. So we started our research and then low and behold, we had some communication with FDA and they said this whole process is really onerous. We’d like to really start looking at a qualified health plan, that if you guys are willing to put a paragraph on there that says this isn’t the be all end, all essentially we’ll give you a health claim.

We’ll let you make a claim. As long as you put the qualifier in there and we go sure. And within a year from that conversation I had with my nutrition person, we were able to have the very first qualified health claim for nuts and cardiovascular disease. Gosh, it’s probably been 15 or 20 years now. Yeah, I think 20.

Yeah, it’s still a fundamental and you can go to the shelf today and see the “nut-trition”. That’s how “nut-trition” got started. that’s a brand that they use. That’s a name that they use. They have that as some of the blends that are a little more positive nutrition wise, they use that nut-rition and it’s still out there.

So it’s one of the things I really am very proud of my team working on and having the idea to do it and taking the risk and figuring out other ways to work around things and working closely with government agencies, marketing and all that, to just really support that brand. So really just a fun situation. If I wanna take a little minute. One of the other things I really learned, because if I look at all the products I’ve worked on and I’ve worked on tons, it’s probably the least change from a agricultural commodity of the nuts we brought, be it pecans, almonds, cashews, peanuts, and all that.

So the finished product that we sold to a consumer, it was. Pretty much the minimal change.

[00:45:46] Melissa: Like from farm to package.

[00:45:47] David: Yeah. You roast them and package ’em. Yeah. And flavor ’em and all that, but not a whole lot compared to what you do with wheat or corn in making some other products. So as the leader of technology for the company, I really invested a lot of my time in learning about the agricultural aspects of the products and it was fascinating stuff.

And something in my long academic career in food science, I really got very little exposure to, so it was really just tremendously insightful for me to learn about everything from small farmers in Virginia, growing peanuts to Walnut orchards in Northern California to cashew growers in Vietnam. Wow.

And lucky enough to visit some of these sites and just some really interesting aspects to how these products are handled from the tree or in the ground where they’re grown to get ’em into our factory, to provide the products that consumers love. So that was really a fun aspect of that brand as well.

[00:46:51] Melissa: That’s wonderful. I know that you valued that and understand that in your words, the food science curriculum is robust enough that there’s really not much room for this agriculture experience or aspect within the curriculum, but how wonderful that you did get to have that as part of your work experience.

Yeah. As we’re wrapping up, I wanted to just briefly touch on clean labels because it’s very popular these days. And like I said, when I went to the IFT conference, everything was about sustainability and clean labels were a big part of that. And we’ve kind of seen clean labels originally stemming from like these clean diets.

So these free from claims and then shifting over into these better for you products. And I was a supermarket dietician 20 years ago and that’s what we were seeing a lot of and still a lot of free from at the time. But now clean labels seem to be transitioning into that sustainability space.

And even though there’s no real definition for clean labels. I think I saw something that says only 15% of the population are clean label enthusiasts. It really, because there’s no clear definition. It’s basically what does clean eating or clean labels mean to each individual person, which poses challenges for a CPG company.

But I was wondering if you could comment briefly on what you’ve seen in the industry shifting towards clean labels, because people want these short ingredients lists. And I’ll just throw in my personal, I’ve brought this up on the podcast before, but sort of criticism that when you’re taking ingredients out of a product to make, give it a short list, but that includes taking out some vitamins and minerals that yu were fortifying or enriching the product with, I get a little like, wait a minute. What are we doing here? And is this trade off really worth it? So I’d just love to get your opinion on that real quick.

[00:48:50] David: Yeah, not a big fan. Because it’s, it doesn’t mean anything right now. There’s no regulation.

There’s no consistency. There’s no definitions. so anybody pretty much can say whatever they want. And I know there’s a couple of agencies that are trying to bring that together and put some standardization, but I think it’s going a little too fast and diluting any positive effect that they can have.

Listen, I think consumers should be able to understand what’s in their products. And as you mentioned, it’s hard. If you look at particularly you mentioned vitamins and minerals. Vitamins – the chemical name is intimidating as hell for almost all the vitamins , but you don’t wanna take them out. They’re there for a reason they’re there because either the processing gets rid of them or there’s not enough in there, or you need it from a dietary standpoint.

So they’re put in there for people’s health, not for arbitrary reasons, but to take it out because the name is intimidating is pretty silly. I think you mentioned it a little bit and I’ll use another example, the focus on bad and removing the bad. It isn’t something I really have had a lot of positive situations with.

It’s really focusing on the good and the combination and you know this better than me and most of your listeners know this better than me. You want a varied diet with lots of different stuff. The more different colors, the more different products, the more different sources you can typically get on your plate, the better that food’s gonna be from an nutrition standpoint.

So the focus on a negative, and I’ve lived through this in I’ll use two different examples. And I we mentioned briefly in fats being negative. So take it out. Well, that’s not always the best solution because the products are not palatable. And another one was salt and certainly at Campbell’s we lived through this and reduced salt soups, which frankly, they weren’t that great.

We thought consumers were crying out for it and that’s all they wanted. So we said, all right, they must be willing to compromise a little bit. Well, they weren’t, because the products didn’t taste good. And the chicken noodle soup wasn’t Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. And again, just like I mentioned with Oreo, you don’t mess around with Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.

So that didn’t work. So I think their focus now and I’ll use them as an example I believe it’s the yes brand – of putting lots of great stuff in these products and lots of positive vegetables and other grains and things like that in the soups to add positive nutrition and talk about the positive stuff.

And you probably have a little sodium in there. They’re trying to balance it and use the least they can to make it palatable, but not to focus on, take it out because it’s bad. Take it out. And I think that’s a very uninformed methodology of communicating to the consumers. Well, that stuff’s all bad for you.

Take it out. Well, no. There’s reasons that manufacturers do that and we should understand the negatives and positives of doing that. And what the absence of that really would do.

[00:52:07] Melissa: The unintended consequences or to your point, the consumer saying, I don’t want it, take it out.

It’s gotta be a tough place for that CPG company. Going back to the BPA, it’s a hard place to be in for a company to give the consumer what they want, but also not necessarily something that’s not good for them. Exactly. You’re missing out on those vitamins and minerals. We’ll talk about clean labels more on the show at some point in the future. Like I said, I might do a series on this, but I appreciate you weighing in on that. And as we’re wrapping up, cause I know you’ve gotta run. Can you just give us maybe some bottom line takeaways or what you are seeing on the horizon with regard to packaging innovations, recycling? What can we as consumers do? What should we be looking for? You said a lot of the focus needs to go on the municipality.

I mentioned circular economy. Can you give us a quick definition on that before we go?

[00:53:23] David: Sure. So the first one, I think what you can expect is lots of change. And I think what the consumers can do is really try to be informed and try to really understand. And I know everybody’s busy and swamped with lots of stuff in their lives, but I think there are potentially ways to learn a little bit more about what you do and where you can compromise and understand that – certainly my experience has been – these large CPG companies that sometimes people say it’s bad corporate America, they’re really great corporate citizens and they wanna do the right thing and they want feedback for consumers.

Contact them, let them know what you like, ask them questions. They have really smart people. And they wanna talk to you. So I think don’t look at them as the, out there not trying to help you. They really are. And then your question on circular economy, all these buzzwords are a little bit confusing there’s extended producer responsibility, post consumer recycled content, biobased, but circular economy tries to get to the point of renewables and finite materials, so that as things are used, they get collected and reused and sort of following that around from the farming of a product and what happens in that process. And can you collect the materials? You mentioned composting was available in your community, are the farms doing their best with their waste products?

Are they recycling them. So looking at all that, looking at the folks that are the intermediaries in this, the people who are making the materials, making the equipment, making the services like electricity and water and all that. And how are they providing that service or material to the consumer. And is that in a sustainable methodology?

Are the materials all recycled? Is the energy usage in the best possible way. So I’ve got this diagram from the Ellen MacArthur foundation. So folks can go to their website and take a look at that. That kind of gives you an idea of, and it’s very complex and it’s hard to follow, but I think it gives you an idea of trying to look at essentially everything that could affect the environment while it is affecting the economy.

[00:55:48] Melissa: Right. Looking at that, the big picture and how everything fits together and beginning with the end in mind, I guess. Yeah.

[00:55:56] David: No, I think that’s a good way to kind of summarize it.

[00:55:59] Melissa: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. I’ll get that diagram from you and put that on my show notes at soundbitesrd.com.

There’s also a website cancentral.com that has some great information about the steel cans used in for beans and corn and tomato sauce and things like that. I’ll collect some more information from you and have that in my show notes, if anybody wants to find out more information. But thank you again so much for coming on the podcast and lightning us on all things that we could cover in an hour with food packaging.

[00:56:32] David: My pleasure.

[00:56:33] Melissa: And for everybody listening as always enjoy your food with health in mind. Till next time.

For more information visit soundbitesrd.com. Music by Dave Birk. Produced by JAG in Detroit Podcasts.