Pierce Mattie Communications caught up with Kelly Kovack of Brand Growth Management after her seminar “Discover the Packaging World” at Cosmoprof Asia.
QUESTION: Your seminar offered an in-depth look at balancing sustainability and economic costs for cosmetic packaging. What are some challenges you’ve seen recently and how can they be overcome?
KELLY KOVACK: Sustainability is a complicated and often daunting issue. From a packaging perspective it involves every aspect from the source of raw materials to the final product. Smart companies realize that sustainability initiatives, such as packaging, don’t exist in a vacuum but rather affect the entire business from internal operations to supply chain to marketing and sales. Defining goals and aligning across the organization can facilitate the process.
Sustainability is a journey and a constant balancing act with a goal of incremental improvements overtime which reduce overall environmental impact. With a diverse set of variables, making decisions on packaging will require determining which areas are the most critical to achieving the overall goals as a business.
QUESTION: Is it possible to be cost-effective and yet deliver a gorgeous sustainable product that the consumer will go crazy over?
KELLY KOVACK: You don’t have to look “green” to be “green” but it requires research, pushing your design team, knowing the right questions to ask and where the answers might be found.
QUESTION: What are the big trends that you see in the next 5-10 years for sustainable packaging?
KELLY KOVACK: The biggest trends will come at the beginning of the packaging life cycle through the innovation of materials and at the end-of-life in how our packaging is dealt with when disposed. Research and development of biopolymers is growing exponentially and could displace the use of nonrenewable resources as performance and availability improves. Currently even though a packaging may be recyclable, it doesn’t necessarily mean it gets recycled. Hopefully, our recycling streams will become more effective by increasing the types of materials that can be reclaimed and reused.
QUESTION: Thank you Ms. Kovack.
KELLY KOVACK: Thank you very much.