How can businesses balance material health, regulatory compliance and public perception when selecting packaging materials?

1. Circularity 20
Unpacking Packaging: The Nuances of Material Health
Lauren Heine, Ph.D.
Director, Safer Materials & Data Integrity
www.chemforward.org
27 August 2020

2. The Path to a Healthy and Circular Materials Economy
“The more you know about the chemicals going into
your product, the better decisions you will make”
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 Disclosure: Know constituents are in (or not in) your current products
 Screening: Screen for priority chemicals of concern
 Substitution: Substitute chemicals of concern with inherently safer alternatives
 Be proactive: Selecting inherently safe chemicals and design for circularity

3. Fiber
Reclaim
Circles of
Sustainability
Wood
Basket
Recycle
Paper
Fiber Reclaim Inadvertent
PCBs in
pigments

4. Contact
Lauren Heine, Ph.D.
Director, Safer Materials & Data Integrity
www.chemforward.org
lauren@chemforward.org
+1 360.220.2069
Know better chemistry

5. Feeding the Circular Economy
• Goal: Eliminate waste destined for landfill or “energy
recovery”
• Strategies
• Provide the service with fewer materials
• Extend the useful product life
• Improve material durability
• Use recycled or readily renewable materials
• Requirements:
• Decrease use of toxic substances including
additives and impurities
• Don’t know if it is safe until you try to make it
circular
• PCR tire crumb rubber used in playing
fields
• PCBs in pigments used in paper
packaging
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6. The Path to Material Health:
RSLs are just a place to start
Step 3. Safe and Circular
Develop chemical products and processes using life
cycle thinking; prefer chemicals and materials that are fully
assessed, of low hazard, and optimized for circularity.
Inspire
Step 2. Use Safer Alternatives
Practice informed substitution. Assess chemicals
to gain better data and understanding of what
is safe and appropriate for specific applications.
Reduce uncertainty
Step 1. Avoid Chemicals of High Concern
Eliminate the use of the “known bads”. Screen products
and processes and avoid chemicals known to have
adverse impacts to human health and the environment.
Reduce business risk

7. • “Sustainability and green chemistry programs must be based on data to ensure that a
company’s products are not promoted using simple “free-of” labels and other superficial
marketing tools and that they make a clear, positive improvement in the life cycle and
safety of the materials they go into.”
• Chemical hazard assessment tools “provide a way to determine whether potential
product ingredients have sufficient data and low hazard to support their long-term use.”
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