Anyone who ordered an old fashioned or whiskey sour at the Johnnie Walker Princes Street's 1820 bar in Edinburgh last fall may have noticed something unusual. The whiskey in the drink tasted the same, but it was poured from a different kind of bottle – a 90% paper-based bottle the brand was trialing, instead of the classic Johnnie Walker Black Label bottle made of glass. 

Over the years, pilots, trials and limited launches have been an important way for brands and their packaging partners to collaborate, experiment and advance sustainable packaging efforts.

Johnnie Walker’s parent company, Diageo, developed the new packaging as part of the Bottle Collective with PA Consulting and PulPac. Dave Lütkenhaus, global sustainability and innovation director at Diageo, said the paper bottle is 60% lighter than the glass bottle. This makes it easier for bartenders to carry and use, while still retaining the brand’s signature elements, including an embossed striding man.

“We’ve been able to combine sustainability benefits with a luxury look and feel to the bottle,” Lütkenhaus said. 

CPG brands and their packaging partners are increasingly working in tandem to set goals and success metrics as they develop, test and roll out innovative packaging solutions. Both parties recognize that designing packaging to be more sustainable frequently involves tradeoffs.

Tiffani Burt, vice president of food materials innovation and development at Sealed Air, said more environmentally conscious packaging often comes at a price premium. Companies want to avoid packaging switches that could degrade performance or risk food waste or product damage. 

“I'm very much of the mindset that innovation is best executed when all of the key stakeholders are at the table and on the journey together,” Burt said.

Today, CPGs stand at a crossroads when it comes to sustainable packaging innovation, with both internal and external pressures. They’re up against corporate sustainability goals, many of which now have 2030 deadlines, as well as consumer and regulatory scrutiny to reduce the prevalence of single-use or virgin plastic in their products. As always, they’re compelled to keep costs down and maintain their margins.

Brands “want sustainable solutions – if they're more cost effective,” said Dustin Smith, CEO of BoldtSmith Packaging Consultants.

Choosing between cost savings and sustainability is no longer optional in many countries. And five U.S. states have passed extended producer responsibility for packaging policies.

“I think that EPR is going to trigger a lot of behaviors that some brands were choosing to do voluntarily,” said Bakul Wadgaonkar, director of sustainability at Sappi North America. Early adopters will continue to set the bar, while others will follow suit, making lightweighting, recyclable materials and circularity the norm going forward, she predicted. 

First and foremost: Life cycle assessments

What do you picture of when you think of “sustainable” packaging? Less plastic? A smaller or thinner package?

To consumers, a switch from plastic to paper or from foam to pulp may, on its face, seem like the sustainable answer, but there are myriad other factors to consider.

When CPGs approach their suppliers with ideas for more sustainable packaging, one of the first things the parties do is look into a life cycle analysis. While many in the industry see LCAs as an imperfect system, they’re still an important tool for studying the impacts of packaging choices, from raw materials to final destination.

“We always want to make sure that if we are providing an alternative to a CPG, that it actually is a truly sustainable alternative,” Wadgaonkar said.

Wadgaonkar said the overall carbon footprint, impact on biodiversity and water stewardship are some of the aspects Sappi assesses when working with a brand on potential new packaging. 

Depending on who you ask, the packaging space is rife with different arguments about which materials offer the most advantageous environmental profile, and brands may come to different conclusions.

In the case of Diageo’s Johnnie Walker trial, the company sees the main advantages of the new bottle as carbon reduction and less weight. The initial external LCA showed the paper bottle prototype had the potential to reduce carbon emissions by up to 47% compared with the glass bottle. 

When examining beverage container trends, aluminum cans have gained popularity among brands looking to disassociate themselves from plastic, noted Michael Martin, founder and CEO of r.World, a reusable food service ware company. But, while recyclable, the life cycle of aluminum poses concerns in other parts of the supply chain, according to Martin.

The process of making an initial can involves mining, which could lead to toxic runoff, he noted. Manufacturers then have to ship aluminum from its source to a plant, smelt the metal and hope that consumers actually recycle the cans. “You lose on every step along the way,” Martin said. Ultimately, packaging suppliers and CPGs must consider which sustainability attribute they want to optimize for, he said.

Burt recalled a large customer that approached Sealed Air in light of EPR regulations coming into play. The customer wanted to move to a fiber-based tray solution while maintaining shelf life and operational efficiency in their plants, without increasing the risk of food waste. 

“Once we balanced all of those critical requirements together, we started innovating on numerous ways to get there,” Burt said. Fiber was one possible solution. But after prototypes, experiments and trials, it was actually a lighter weight bioplastic that ticked the most boxes. 

Expanded polystyrene foam versus molded pulp is another comparison where an LCA may reveal unexpected results. Pulp is likely more recyclable, but molded pulp typically requires large amounts of water in the manufacturing process. In the end, the two materials are very close from a carbon footprint impact, according to Smith. 

“When you're comparing option A to B, you're not just looking at, can it be recycled or not?” Smith said. “There's so many more things that you have to consider.”

Test, learn, rinse and repeat

Trials and pilots are a big part of the sustainable packaging process so brands and suppliers can determine whether they’re meeting key performance indicators and avoiding functionality issues before making a full-scale commitment. 

“We tend to do it in a very phased approach,” Burt said, “to work out the kinks.”

For some tests, Sealed Air starts with a small group of about 200 consumers to get feedback on a new type of packaging and see if consumers recognize any differences compared with previous versions. Sealed Air also aims to learn what drives consumers’ buying behaviors and if they understand any sustainability claims printed on the packaging.

After that, the packaging supplier and brand trial the packaging in a small geographic area over the course of a few weeks, monitoring sales and product quality during that time and making adjustments as needed. The next step involves scaling up to a larger area or potentially more retailers. 

Sealed Air takes this multi-step approach because “very rarely do we hit it out of the park straight out of the gate,” Burt said. “You're going to have several of those times where you run into a pivot point or a learning opportunity.”

The key is to identify potential problems and switch gears quickly, before scaling the packaging production and potentially running into larger problems down the road.

For its fiber-based Johnnie Walker bottle, Diageo started with a small trial of 250 bottles across four weeks at one bar. That test allowed the company to glean some initial learnings. Bartenders liked the lighter weight of the paper bottle and the fact it wouldn’t shatter like glass. But they needed to adjust how they handled the bottle when pouring. The neck was too short, so future versions of the packaging will need a longer neck.

Diageo takes a “progress over perfection mindset” as it innovates, Lütkenhaus said. It plans to continue working with PA Consulting, PulPac and the Bottle Collective on the next iteration of its fiber bottle before scaling the packaging.

Small-scale shipping is often part of suppliers’ and brands’ testing process, Smith said. In a trial, the stakeholders might ship 50 to 100 units of a product in its new packaging to see how it performs as it travels from warehouse to truck to store shelf and beyond. 

“Some things you just can’t replicate in a lab. You have to ship it,” Smith said.

What is success?

Throughout the LCA and testing process, brands and packaging suppliers check in frequently on their predetermined goals. Functionality over form is crucial.

“We're not going to move into a different material format if it compromises the integrity of the product, reduces the shelf life or increases food waste,” Sealed Air’s Burt said.

Sappi’s Wadgaonkar gave the example of a plastic or glass bottle of a cough syrup that contains a polycoat lining to protect the medicine. The brand may want to move away from the polycoat to entirely paper-based packaging. Sappi would evaluate the functional requirements, why the polycoat existed in the first place and how a new paper package could provide the same barrier properties while solving for the brand’s sustainability desires. 

Although they can make it harder to achieve a monomaterial package, linings and barriers are especially important in the food and beverage sector. Diageo kept a thin plastic liner in its Johnnie Walker fiber-based bottle.

Any new packaging has to resonate with the end user, as well. Consumers’ interaction with an item often involves moving down a store aisle to pick up and touch a product, which is why it’s important to pay attention to cosmetic and haptic properties, Wadgaonkar said. 

PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay saw this firsthand back in 2008 when it launched a compostable bag for its SunChips. The problem: The bags made an enormous crinkling sound, leading to internet memes and jokes and sending the brand back to the drawing board to work on quieter compostable packaging.

User-friendliness was a top priority for Toufayan Bakeries, which in October debuted new packaging for its pita bread that it said used less plastic than before and has a resealable zipper closure. The resealable zipper reduced some plastic and enhanced freshness and convenience for consumers, Karen Toufayan, the brand’s vice president of marketing, said in an email. The bakery brand made it a priority to implement the new packaging without increasing costs for consumers, “ensuring that environmentally conscious choices remain accessible,” Toufayan said.

In Diageo’s Johnnie Walker bottle trial, the biggest test was seeing how bartenders interacted with and poured from the bottles, but consumers did have some interaction with the bottles, Lütkenhaus said. They said it looked high quality, but they weren’t sure why Diageo developed a paper bottle – a lesson for the CPG to more clearly communicate the benefits of lighter materials to consumers. 

The ultimate test of a successful packaging rollout is whether consumers start buying more of the product, and retailers, in turn, order more and devote more shelf space to it. 

“You want it to start driving more share gain for customers,” Burt said. “That's the holy grail.”

Visuals Editor Shaun Lucas contributed to this story.