Procter & Gamble’s Tide laundry detergent brand first introduced in January 2019 its “Eco-Box,” which has been compared to a wine box because of its design made from paperboard with a tap for dispensing, in an effort to reduce the plastic in its packaging. In mid-May, the Eco-Boxes are becoming available for other fabric care product lines, including Tide purclean, Downy, Gain and Dreft.

The initiatives are related to P&G’s current sustainability goals introduced in 2018, Ambition 2030, which include a commitment to make its packaging 100 percent recyclable or reusable by 2030. 

Each business unit within P&G has its own approach, and the Eco-Box was one way P&G’s Fabric Care division set out to meet its packaging goal. 

To be clear, the Eco-Box package still includes plastic — with the bag that holds the liquid detergent itself — but uses 60 percent less of it than the traditional packaging for P&G’s detergent brands.

I think perfection is [figuring] out the technologies to make this so that that bag and tap are also just easy curbside recycling.

“We’ve moved to a huge reduction in plastic, but [the plastic bag] not curbside-recyclable,” said Todd Cline, section head for P&G Fabric Care’s research and development team.

“I think perfection is [figuring] out the technologies to make this so that that bag and tap are also just easy curbside recycling,” he continued. “But there’s just not technologies for that yet today, to create bags to hold liquids that are puncture-resistant and will survive all of the shipping.”

In the meantime, P&G has a stopgap solution for collection and end-of-life processing in place. When the Tide Eco-Box launched, P&G partnered with TerraCycle to offer a recycling option for the inner bag. That program will continue, now including the full Eco-Box portfolio.

Cline said P&G uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to guide its work, “particularly as it comes to sustainability,” noting that from an LCA standpoint, P&G is making a huge reduction in its carbon footprint and amount of plastic that’s going to landfills through the Eco-Box packaging effort. 

“For us, that’s a technical trade-off at the start. But it’s one of those that if we waited for perfection … we would be sitting on this technology that could have a really great benefit from a sustainability standpoint, but holding it until it’s perfect,” Cline said, referring to the need to engage TerraCycle on collection. 

When the new Eco-Box detergents hit the market — the products will be available online only from major U.S. retailers — Cline said they will continue to test and iterate on the packaging to improve it.

All paper, no plastic

In a different part of the company, P&G Beauty, the packaging strategy is likewise taking another turn away from plastic: toward all-paper packaging. Indeed, these are just two recent examples of how P&G is working to meet its 2030 goal.

“This is just one of many innovations that P&G is working on to address the problem of plastic waste. This is an important step forward, and there is much more to come,” wrote Anitra Marsh, associate director of global sustainability and brand communications with P&G Beauty, by email.

Two of those beauty and personal care brands are Old Spice and Secret, which will launch all-paper packaging for their aluminum-free deodorants this month at 500 Walmart stores in the U.S.

“As the largest retailer in the world partnering with the largest deodorant and antiperspirant brands in the U.S., we know this new paperboard package has the potential to have significant positive impact and lay the groundwork for even broader impact,” said Jason Kloster, senior buying manager for body care and grooming at Walmart, in a press release.

Marsh said P&G co-designed the all-paper deodorant packaging for its Secret and Old Spice products with consumers interested in cutting back on plastic waste. The package format contains 90 percent post-consumer recycled content and 10 percent new paper fibers. P&G developed package prototypes then shared the designs with consumers to see which options were “most appealing and easy to use.”

P&G isn’t the only company trying to eliminate plastic packaging for deodorant. Across the pond in London, a company called Wild raised $621,775 in seed funding for its refillable no-plastic deodorant packaging — made from durable aluminum and bamboo pulp — after a successful pilot launch in 2019.

Marsh said it took less than a year to bring P&G’s all-paper, plastic-free deodorant packaging to market. During the development process, the first package design did not pass a key recyclability test because the glue used for the label diminished the quality of the recycled paper pulp.

“We quickly went back to the drawing board to find another label glue that doesn’t impede recycling, and this is what we are using now in our Old Spice and Secret paper tube packages that are launching in May,” she said.

The deodorant hit the shelves May 1, and P&G will continue to evaluate the recyclability and repulpability of the packaging this summer, according to Marsh.

“We are aiming for 100 percent recyclability,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Brink News.

The global spread of COVID-19 has sparked a clarion call to diversify supply chains away from China. But its singularity as a manufacturing location will make it hard to find alternatives. 

The outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan in January highlighted the pitfalls of China as the dominant global manufacturer of record. A delay in orders from Chinese factories was inevitable, given the scale of dependency on Wuhan alone. According to Dun & Bradstreet, a business intelligence company, 51,000 companies have one or more direct suppliers (PDF) in Wuhan, while 5 million companies have one or more tier-two suppliers in the region. The data suggests that it’s not just Southeast Asia that is dependent on Chinese suppliers — the problem appears to be much more widespread. 

Another survey by the Institute for Supply Management captures the magnitude of the outbreak for global manufacturers: More than half (57 percent) of companies are experiencing longer lead times for tier-1 China-sourced components, while 44 percent are simply unprepared to address continued supply disruptions from China. A case in point — technology giant Apple was one of the first major global companies to inform investors that it would miss Q1 revenue projections, in part due to delays in production by its China-based assembly plants. Of late, Apple had begun to move some production activities to Vietnam and India, but the company remains reliant on Chinese assembly plants to power its inventory.  

Manufacturers will need to navigate the imperative for greater supply chain resilience versus the attractiveness of China as a manufacturing location.

The spread of the coronavirus has made one thing clear — across the technology, automotive, electronics, pharmaceutical, medical equipment and consumer goods sectors, nearly all supply chains lead back to China as the preeminent global provider of intermediate materials and components. Recognizing the risk that a dependency on China poses to national industries, some governments are offering manufacturers incentives to exit China and ease the pain of diversification. Japan is putting $2.2 billion of its COVID-19 economic stimulus package into supporting its manufacturers shift production outside of China. There’s also mounting public pressure in some countries, such as the United States, to move essential production of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment out of China and closer to home.

Indeed, the pandemic might accelerate pre-existing plans to reduce supply chain dependency on China. Alongside rising labor costs, the ratcheting of trade tensions between China and the U.S. already had pushed brands to re-evaluate their “single-source” strategies. More than 80 percent of fashion brands said (PDF) they already planned to reduce sourcing from China, according to a July U.S. Fashion Industry Association report. Ensuring more resilience in supply chains is also likely to be a future expectation of investors, who will be looking at the ability of companies to hedge risk in the event of continued outbreaks or other “Black Swan” events. The chairman of Wistron, an iPhone assembler, told analysts that the company would locate 50 percent of its capacity outside of China by 2021. Simply put, the coronavirus has accelerated trends that have been evident for some time pertaining to China’s manufacturing stature.

But the reality is that a major manufacturing shift away from China is easier said than done. Even those companies that have diversified production are finding it hard to break free of China’s pervasive influence. Anticipating a rise in tariffs from the U.S.-China trade war, video game producer Nintendo had shifted the manufacturing of its blockbuster gaming console to Vietnam in 2019. Still, there is a shortage of Switch consoles in stores today due to a lack of essential components flowing to the company’s Vietnamese factories, as COVID-19 paused production by Chinese suppliers of component parts. 

U.S. businesses are still bullish on Chinese consumers, despite the impact of the virus.

The global technology and consumer electronics sectors are especially reliant on China’s infrastructure and specialized labor pool, neither of which will be easy to replicate. The Chinese government is already mobilizing resources to convince producers of China’s unique merits as a manufacturing location. Zhengzhou, within Henan Province, has appointed officials to support Apple’s partner Foxconn in mitigating the disruptions caused by the coronavirus, while the Ministry of Finance is increasing credit support to the manufacturing sector. Further, the Chinese government is likely to channel stimulus efforts to develop the country’s high-tech manufacturing infrastructure, moving away from its low-value manufacturing base and accelerating its vision for a technology-driven services economy.  

To this end, manufacturers are cognizant of the potential of China as a major consumer market for iPhones today and for advanced technologies such as robotics, autonomous vehicles and smart devices tomorrow. A flash poll by the Beijing-based U.S. Chamber of Commerce conducted in March shows that U.S. businesses are still bullish on Chinese consumers, despite the impact of the virus. The consumer sector had the most businesses reporting that they intend to maintain planned investments (46 percent), followed by the technology industry (43 percent). 

As manufacturers examine their supply chains for a post-COVID 19 world, the imperative for greater supply chain resilience versus the attractiveness of China as a manufacturing location and tech-forward consumer market is the defining tension that they will need to navigate. The outcome is unlikely to be a clean break from China for most.

Lower-value sectors, such as apparel, are most likely to expedite diversification. Indeed, many garment manufacturers already have diversified from China to the likes of Vietnam, Cambodia and Ethiopia on the basis of rising labor costs. It will be the higher-value technology and consumer electronics sectors — where the country’s manufacturing prowess and consumer potential is the most pronounced — that will find it hardest to turn away from China’s distinctive allure.