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The Future of Packaging: From Linear to Circular
Outstanding Book of the Year gold medalist and "Most Likely to Save the Planet" from the Independent Book Publisher Awards.
Tom Szaky sets out to do the impossible - eliminate all waste. This book paints a future of a circular economy that relies on responsible reuse and recycling to propel the world towards eradicating overconsumption and waste.
Only 35 percent of the 240 million metric tons of waste generated in the United States alone gets recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This extraordinary collection shows how manufacturers can move from a one-way take-make-waste economy that is burying the world in waste to a circular, make-use-recycle economy.
Steered by Tom Szaky, recycling pioneer, eco-capitalist, and founder and CEO of TerraCycle, each chapter is coauthored by an expert in his or her field. From the distinct perspectives of government leaders, consumer packaged goods companies, waste management firms, and more, the book explores current issues of production and consumption, practical steps for improving packaging and reducing waste today, and big ideas and concepts that can be carried forward.
Intended to help every business from a small start-up to a large established consumer product company, this book serves as a source of knowledge and inspiration. The message from these pioneers is not to scale back but to innovate upward. They offer nothing less than a guide to designing ourselves out of waste and into abundance.
Tom Szaky sets out to do the impossible - eliminate all waste. This book paints a future of a circular economy that relies on responsible reuse and recycling to propel the world towards eradicating overconsumption and waste.
Only 35 percent of the 240 million metric tons of waste generated in the United States alone gets recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This extraordinary collection shows how manufacturers can move from a one-way take-make-waste economy that is burying the world in waste to a circular, make-use-recycle economy.
Steered by Tom Szaky, recycling pioneer, eco-capitalist, and founder and CEO of TerraCycle, each chapter is coauthored by an expert in his or her field. From the distinct perspectives of government leaders, consumer packaged goods companies, waste management firms, and more, the book explores current issues of production and consumption, practical steps for improving packaging and reducing waste today, and big ideas and concepts that can be carried forward.
Intended to help every business from a small start-up to a large established consumer product company, this book serves as a source of knowledge and inspiration. The message from these pioneers is not to scale back but to innovate upward. They offer nothing less than a guide to designing ourselves out of waste and into abundance.
320 pages, Paperback
First published February 5, 2019
37 people are currently reading
283 people want to read
About the author
Tom Szaky
8 books9 followersTom Szaky is the CEO and founder of TerraCycle, a company that makes consumer products from waste.
Szaky's parents are medical doctors, and Szaky himself is an only child. At age four, Szaky left his home in Hungary after the Chernobyl disaster. In 1987, Szaky immigrated to Canada, where he grew up in Toronto. Szaky attended high school at Upper Canada College. He attended college at Princeton University, majoring in psychology and economics. He dropped out during his sophomore year to focus on TerraCycle.
Early on in his career, Tom started three small 'dot.com' companies. These were Werehome.com, piority.com, and studentmarks.com. In 2006, Tom was named the "#1 CEO under thirty" by Inc. magazine in its July 2006 issue for his work in TerraCycle.
Szaky's parents are medical doctors, and Szaky himself is an only child. At age four, Szaky left his home in Hungary after the Chernobyl disaster. In 1987, Szaky immigrated to Canada, where he grew up in Toronto. Szaky attended high school at Upper Canada College. He attended college at Princeton University, majoring in psychology and economics. He dropped out during his sophomore year to focus on TerraCycle.
Early on in his career, Tom started three small 'dot.com' companies. These were Werehome.com, piority.com, and studentmarks.com. In 2006, Tom was named the "#1 CEO under thirty" by Inc. magazine in its July 2006 issue for his work in TerraCycle.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 12, 2019
I’m the second person to rate this book, the other rating I see is 1 Star? So, I’ll be the first one to review it from my own 5 star review. This book is a compilation of 15 experts working to solve problems around sustainable and circular packaging solutions for a major industry shift. They provide a lot of expert opinions on what needs to happen from their unique on the frontlines point of view. So you will learn a lot about the current problems of recycling and what stands in the way of making it a truly circular system which it not at the moment. You will also learn a lot about the types of packaging and their recyclability and the questions package designers, consumers and industry needs to ask their local recyclers and composers to figure out what kinds of packaging they should be making in order to fuel the circular recycling economy so that it can exist in the future. As a consumer you will likely not look at all the plastic packaging the same way again as you take it to the recycling bin. This book helps make us aware of our role as sorters if we want this to work. Me, I’m 100% plastic free in my shopping habits so a lot of this book isn’t necessary what I want in my future however it offers the most realistic solutions as we gotta deal with all the plastic packaging already out in the waste stream in an effective way. This is what the authors companies, Terracycle and Loop is addressing and I think he does a job job presenting the case from a very high industry view of companies like Procter and Gamble and Unilever. I give this book 5 stars for the effort and information provided. I think this should be required reading for all inspiring package designers. Peace!!!
August 22, 2020
A comprehensive view on packaging waste from multiple different aspects -
The history of recycling and the shift in consumer behaviour from the 50s. Current Recycling streams, their respective challenges and problems. The economic challenges of recycling. There are some tangible takeaways for manufacturers to improve packaging design, focus on pre-consumer waste and practical focus on recyclable vs recycled. More recent trends such as BioPlastics are touched upon as well. The false promises of bioplastics and the future hope.
However, towards the end the book becomes a marketing tool for brands to showcase their anecdotal efforts. With authors from companies such as Unilever, Pepsico, P&G the focus starts to shift away from practical advice to storytelling.
The history of recycling and the shift in consumer behaviour from the 50s. Current Recycling streams, their respective challenges and problems. The economic challenges of recycling. There are some tangible takeaways for manufacturers to improve packaging design, focus on pre-consumer waste and practical focus on recyclable vs recycled. More recent trends such as BioPlastics are touched upon as well. The false promises of bioplastics and the future hope.
However, towards the end the book becomes a marketing tool for brands to showcase their anecdotal efforts. With authors from companies such as Unilever, Pepsico, P&G the focus starts to shift away from practical advice to storytelling.
May 18, 2020
Informative and easy-reading, though for lingo comprehension it helps to work in a related industry. With so many corporate contributing writers, a few chapters inevitably feel a little like marketing, but an overall sincere and informative result.
November 23, 2020
The Future of Packaging: From Linear to Circular, by Tom Szaky, et al. (Berrett-Koehler, 2019)
You wouldn’t expect a book on consumer and industrial package to be fascinating, but this one certainly fascinated me (your mileage may vary). Packaging is its doorway to explore the entire state of sustainability in business
Compiled by Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of the amazing company TerraCycle—which has found ways to turn such items as cigarette butts and foil/plastic chip bags into usable raw materials—this book held my interest in surprising ways.
First, there was the meta-level: an anthology that isn’t so much discrete articles as a coherent, collaborative whole. Many chapters draw on the previous ones and hint at the content to follow. And those authors include C-level and senior management at Unilever, Procter & Gamble (two of the largest consumer packaged goods conglomerates in the world), and SUEZ (a major global player in waste management), as well as equally heavy hitters in thinktanks and government (from the World Economic Forum to the former head of the EPA).
Then, of course, the rich and informative content; I took six pages of notes! I learned a lot about how products are recycled, what some of the issues are, why careless “recycling” by well-intentioned consumers trying to recycle more does the opposite of what they think and consigns huge quantities of material to the landfill; the whole batch is considered contaminated. And finally an answer to something that I’d wondered about for years—WHY black plastic isn’t recyclable: because the optical scanners recycling facilities use to separate the waste stream can’t read the number indicating what type of plastic it is, and different kinds of plastic shouldn’t be mixed (p. 100). The inability to recycle black, often extremely durable material that should be able to be repurposed, has always bothered me.
And I also learned some things about how to think about packaging from an end-of-life perspective, and how to incorporate those insights at the design phase—so right from the start, packages can be designed to be easily collected, reused, and/or recycled (pp. 85-87, among other sections).
Ultimately, pretty much anything can be recycled, even used disposable diapers and menstrual pads (p. 72). But what we recycle depends on what end products we can sell profitably. And that has to do both with whether recyclers can find or create ready markets and with how much energy, how many processes, and at what cost to process the waste into something recyclable. And that makes me wonder: Is it really worth doing something like P&G’s project collecting beach plastic, running it through a dozen or more processes, and surrounding it with layers of virgin plastic in order to make a shampoo bottle (pp. 228-237)—or are the energy and infrastructure costs and the product compromises too great; is it really just greenwashing for a significant PR benefit?
It’s encouraging to see how much progress our biggest corporations have made and how creatively they’ve sought profit opportunities from thinking differently about packaging and waste. As an example, Unilever’s zero-waste strategy saves $234 million a year and created 1000 new jobs (pp. 171-172). But I had many questions; here are a few:
* If the issue with black plastic is optical, couldn’t there be a work-around, such as human sorting or a different type of sorting machine that tests through electronic analysis of the chemical structure?
* Rather than doing something like P&G’s beach plastic project, would it perhaps make more sense to develop enzymes that can digest plastics, and figure out a way to use the digested residue?
* Why do we lose usability with every recycling iteration, when nature has true self-sustaining closed loops?
Despite these questions, this book is a crucial addition to the green business bookshelf, and is likely to make a positive impact on designers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers for many years. But read Cradle to Cradle first so you're not coming to this in a vacuum
You wouldn’t expect a book on consumer and industrial package to be fascinating, but this one certainly fascinated me (your mileage may vary). Packaging is its doorway to explore the entire state of sustainability in business
Compiled by Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of the amazing company TerraCycle—which has found ways to turn such items as cigarette butts and foil/plastic chip bags into usable raw materials—this book held my interest in surprising ways.
First, there was the meta-level: an anthology that isn’t so much discrete articles as a coherent, collaborative whole. Many chapters draw on the previous ones and hint at the content to follow. And those authors include C-level and senior management at Unilever, Procter & Gamble (two of the largest consumer packaged goods conglomerates in the world), and SUEZ (a major global player in waste management), as well as equally heavy hitters in thinktanks and government (from the World Economic Forum to the former head of the EPA).
Then, of course, the rich and informative content; I took six pages of notes! I learned a lot about how products are recycled, what some of the issues are, why careless “recycling” by well-intentioned consumers trying to recycle more does the opposite of what they think and consigns huge quantities of material to the landfill; the whole batch is considered contaminated. And finally an answer to something that I’d wondered about for years—WHY black plastic isn’t recyclable: because the optical scanners recycling facilities use to separate the waste stream can’t read the number indicating what type of plastic it is, and different kinds of plastic shouldn’t be mixed (p. 100). The inability to recycle black, often extremely durable material that should be able to be repurposed, has always bothered me.
And I also learned some things about how to think about packaging from an end-of-life perspective, and how to incorporate those insights at the design phase—so right from the start, packages can be designed to be easily collected, reused, and/or recycled (pp. 85-87, among other sections).
Ultimately, pretty much anything can be recycled, even used disposable diapers and menstrual pads (p. 72). But what we recycle depends on what end products we can sell profitably. And that has to do both with whether recyclers can find or create ready markets and with how much energy, how many processes, and at what cost to process the waste into something recyclable. And that makes me wonder: Is it really worth doing something like P&G’s project collecting beach plastic, running it through a dozen or more processes, and surrounding it with layers of virgin plastic in order to make a shampoo bottle (pp. 228-237)—or are the energy and infrastructure costs and the product compromises too great; is it really just greenwashing for a significant PR benefit?
It’s encouraging to see how much progress our biggest corporations have made and how creatively they’ve sought profit opportunities from thinking differently about packaging and waste. As an example, Unilever’s zero-waste strategy saves $234 million a year and created 1000 new jobs (pp. 171-172). But I had many questions; here are a few:
* If the issue with black plastic is optical, couldn’t there be a work-around, such as human sorting or a different type of sorting machine that tests through electronic analysis of the chemical structure?
* Rather than doing something like P&G’s beach plastic project, would it perhaps make more sense to develop enzymes that can digest plastics, and figure out a way to use the digested residue?
* Why do we lose usability with every recycling iteration, when nature has true self-sustaining closed loops?
Despite these questions, this book is a crucial addition to the green business bookshelf, and is likely to make a positive impact on designers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers for many years. But read Cradle to Cradle first so you're not coming to this in a vacuum
January 23, 2022
I listened to the unabridged 6-hour audio version of this title (read by Jeff Hoyt and Natalie Hoyt, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2018).
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, only about 1/3 of the 240M metric tons of waste generated annually in the US gets recycled. We have gone from a natural, voluntary recycling economy (buying milk and juice in bottles, some 95% of which got reused) to the convenience and low cost of plastic containers and packaging (very little of which is recycled). And the waste problem does not arise from packaging only. Some 99% of everything produced becomes trash within a year of production.
Saying that something is "recyclable" is quite different from saying that it is "recycled." Nearly everything is technically recyclable, but items that are actually recycled are those that produce profits for material recycling facilities (MRF's). Additionally, some readily-recyclable materials are not recycled due to contamination and the impossibility of economically separating them from undesirable material. Thus, much of what we put in our recycling bins actually ends up in trash dumps. Producers would do well to ensure that their packaging materials are actually desired, rather than reluctantly accepted, by recycling companies.
Plastics have led to conveniences and cost-savings in our lives. Not all plastics are recycled, even though they are recyclable. It is estimated that, by weight, our oceans will soon contain more plastics than fish! A typical new car is 15% plastics by weight; a Boeing passenger jet is 50% plastics. The latter use of plastics is less problematic due to its long life-expectancy. A significant portion of plastics, ~1/4, is used for packaging, where the recycling percentage is quite low. Mixing different material in packaging for the sake of aesthetics or strength makes recycling more difficult.
An eye-opening revelation for me was the fact that we, as consumers, are aware only of post-consumer waste in packaging and other material. Over-packaging is common in e-commerce. We have all received a small item, such as a pen or watch, that arrived in a huge box, with a tiny box and much filler material inside. Over-packaging is also a method used by manufacturers of top-of-the-line consumer products to set their products apart or to prevent theft. Hidden from our view as consumers is the pre-consumer waste, which includes packaging for raw material sent to factories, discarding of defective products, and scraps of material such as cloth and metal, and extra layers of packaging to facilitate and prevent damage during shipping.
Much planning and effort will be needed to return to a circular economy, from the current predominantly-linear economy, where materials take a one-way trip from production to garbage dumps.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, only about 1/3 of the 240M metric tons of waste generated annually in the US gets recycled. We have gone from a natural, voluntary recycling economy (buying milk and juice in bottles, some 95% of which got reused) to the convenience and low cost of plastic containers and packaging (very little of which is recycled). And the waste problem does not arise from packaging only. Some 99% of everything produced becomes trash within a year of production.
Saying that something is "recyclable" is quite different from saying that it is "recycled." Nearly everything is technically recyclable, but items that are actually recycled are those that produce profits for material recycling facilities (MRF's). Additionally, some readily-recyclable materials are not recycled due to contamination and the impossibility of economically separating them from undesirable material. Thus, much of what we put in our recycling bins actually ends up in trash dumps. Producers would do well to ensure that their packaging materials are actually desired, rather than reluctantly accepted, by recycling companies.
Plastics have led to conveniences and cost-savings in our lives. Not all plastics are recycled, even though they are recyclable. It is estimated that, by weight, our oceans will soon contain more plastics than fish! A typical new car is 15% plastics by weight; a Boeing passenger jet is 50% plastics. The latter use of plastics is less problematic due to its long life-expectancy. A significant portion of plastics, ~1/4, is used for packaging, where the recycling percentage is quite low. Mixing different material in packaging for the sake of aesthetics or strength makes recycling more difficult.
An eye-opening revelation for me was the fact that we, as consumers, are aware only of post-consumer waste in packaging and other material. Over-packaging is common in e-commerce. We have all received a small item, such as a pen or watch, that arrived in a huge box, with a tiny box and much filler material inside. Over-packaging is also a method used by manufacturers of top-of-the-line consumer products to set their products apart or to prevent theft. Hidden from our view as consumers is the pre-consumer waste, which includes packaging for raw material sent to factories, discarding of defective products, and scraps of material such as cloth and metal, and extra layers of packaging to facilitate and prevent damage during shipping.
Much planning and effort will be needed to return to a circular economy, from the current predominantly-linear economy, where materials take a one-way trip from production to garbage dumps.
Read
June 22, 2019This was a quick read, and I liked the format where Szaky collaborated with different experts for each chapter. While the book reasonably comes from a pro-Terracycle perspective, I still found it to be useful, whirlwind tour of various packaging products and how they are or aren’t reused. It’s worth reading if you’re curious about some more environmentally friendly ways packaging could be headed, and was useful to me in a consulting project I worked on this past semester.
December 20, 2022
Eye-opening and full of interesting facts without being boring. It kept me entertained throughout the whole book, generating new ideas and questions, which I think is what makes it a fantastic book. It sparked a new and strong interest in me about sustainable packaging and provided a new understanding of the industry behind recycling and packaging design - really supportive to the idea of circular economy.
March 10, 2019
Excellent book that should be mandatory reading in high schools and colleges.
October 16, 2020
Great book
March 27, 2021
Excellent introduction to sustainable packaging for both producers and consumers.
January 1, 2022
I found this book at my local Barnes & Nobles and decided to give it a shot. While I did think this book went around in circles from time to time, the argument being made is one that not only people in the packaging industry should know about, but that all people should know about. The plastic problem that has occurred due to a linear lifecycle is a massive issue that our world faces environmentally. In this book, Tom Szacky and other industry leaders come together and talk about the future of packaging. If you are interested in this sort of topic, I'd highly recommend this book.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews