EcoEnclose's Four Key Takeaways From the Certification Process

When working with new manufacturing partners, plants, and converting partners overseas and in countries where the native language differs from our own, certifications offer a critical tool - a third party to define and categorize various material types. Where there may be a language barrier or different colloquial understandings, a third party can classify materials against a standard, ensuring that all parties are on the same page.

Example: Different regions of the world refer differently to the two main kinds of recycled content. In America, we usually refer to manufacturing scrap as post-industrial waste or PIW and post-consumer waste (from blue bins and consumer recycling streams) as PCW. However, other regions of the world use the acronym PCW interchangeably and differentiate it only by context: “pre-consumer” (meaning post-industrial) or “post-consumer.” Therefore, a manufacturing verification letter that states “100% PCW recycled content” may mean very different things, depending on who is reading and interpreting it.

Working with suppliers whose materials have gained third-party certification can be especially helpful for brands with publicly-stated sustainability, labor, or materiality goals, especially if their environmental claims may eventually face legal regulation.

Example: A publicly traded brand that commits to using 100% tree-free paper is under a much closer eye for potential mishaps in its supply chain and is in danger of legal action if they’re found to be sourcing tree-based paper and inaccurately labeling products. Certifications help verify the entire chain of custody of materials throughout the supply chain - giving brands with supply-chain or end-of-life packaging goals much more stability and ultimately reducing their risk and potential losses through legal action.

Example: When pursuing our FSC® Chain of Custody certification this year, one of the required portions of our auditing process was to review and submit our official policy that outlawed child labor and forced labor in our organization. At first, we scratched our heads- this was probably an oversight, and we didn’t really need to have this as a standalone policy, right? Wasn’t this a given, since these policies were both required by United States law and our employee handbook and because our paper supply chain sits entirely domestic in the USA?

After further exploration, we learned that FSC®’s guidelines required this to be a separate and standing policy for any FSC®-certified chain of custody member because of the organization’s global reach and because child labor and forced labor are unfortunately still realities in many parts of the world. At first, it was just another task to complete for the certification process. Afterward, it represented much more.

It was a good reminder that these certifications, though still imperfect and still able to exist in locations with other poor behavior, can include and require important standards to be met for human health, safety, and equity across the globe - standards that some governments don’t require. While it may not be the primary reason for pursuing a certification like FSC®, for example, it’s a bonus to know that your chain of custody has all contractually agreed to a very basic level of concern and care for human and worker health.

In 2023, sustainability teams within consumer-focused brands are currently facing swift and devastating budget cuts. This reduces their ability to complete projects and make forward progress on brand sustainability goals. Much of this stems from concerns about inflation and recession and how this stall in consumer spending will affect brands’ overall profitability. Unfortunately, departments like Sustainability are seen as more expendable and often face the chopping block first.

Even though sustainability goals and targets are often a critical (if not the critical) component for a brand’s ethos and marketing, the people behind how those goals are accomplished are usually the first to be stalled to redirect funds to more profit-related areas of a business, or to keep cash on-hand during difficult and uncertain financial times. In 2023, we’re approaching some of the most commonly cited years for vast and sweeping sustainability changes and improvements: 2025, 2030, 2040.

Sustainability professionals and leaders face a catch-22: their corporate ESG goals have never been closer, with more pressure and less time to reach them, AND they are cut at the knees regarding the available resources to achieve them. In some ways, certifications and certified packaging can help to achieve or reduce the human capital needed to verify some ESG goals.

Example: If a brand has a goal of achieving 100% widely recyclable packaging by 2025, a helpful process and labeling scheme might be to pursue How2Recycle membership, testing, and labeling for their packaging suite. Working with a packaging supplier who is also invested in keeping their packaging materials’ certifications up to date and valid is another way to leverage pre-existing certifications towards internal corporate goals. Packaging converters and producers can also work with How2Recycle to pre-qualify a handful of films or materials against H2R standards, allowing brands to choose a packaging producer more easily to align with inventory needs and sustainability goals.

Additionally, we often pursue certifications simply due to brand or customer requirements, as many large enterprises we serve are looking to derisk their supply chain.

While the certification business is still one that largely favors the largest, most established (and often, the least agile or innovative) players in an industry, we take an honest, good-faith approach to these requests and requirements from brands. We will always take the time to work one-on-one with our brands and EcoAllies to understand their priorities, business needs, and their needs for additional product-level certifications where they don’t yet exist and work to align with them.

We continue to get requests for certifications from the conscious brands we work with. Going forward, EcoEnclose will continue to use our framework to determine the highest-priority areas to pursue third-party certification, recognizing that we won’t pursue a certification without doing it correctly and we will steer clear of fraudulent or misleading claims.

We will prioritize the areas of extraction, sourcing, and production since that is where most of a product’s environmental footprint is derived. As with our sustainable packaging framework, our certifications focus will prioritize the source materials used in our products, with secondary importance on verifying products' end-of-life as needed.

Expect to see more of our (already-certified) FSC® products brought into our chain of custody umbrella over time.