How to manage sustainability metrics in a circular economy?

A range of sustainability metrics are available to packaging brand owners to showcase their sustainability. These can be divided into three distinct groups. Firstly, there are the life cycle metrics. These are long term, big picture endpoints for sustainability such as climate change, water scarcity or resources depletion. Secondly, the metrics relating to circularity look at material flows. They include recycled content, recycling rates, reusability or composability. Lastly, there are social and other issue-specific metrics such as fair-trade, locally made, vegan or plastic free.

There is a tendency to focus first on metric which are more achievable or tangible which while leaving more difficult metric and targets to the future.  Without careful evaluation of packaging strategies there is real risk that optimising on simpler metrics such as recycled content, seriously compromises the ability to meet longer term targets such as climate change.    A more nuanced use of metric is required to balance competing demands of environment and social endpoints.