Generation Next Thinking: Regulations and sustainability goals drive changes in packaging
Visual appeal is everything at the shelf. Beyond protecting food and extending shelf life, packaging is a powerful tool for communicating freshness, quality and convenience—often influencing which products make it into the basket. But the story doesn’t end at the checkout.
Michelle Saunders, vice-president, sustainability at Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada (FHCP), makes it a point to show manufacturers the other side of packaging.
For the past few years, Saunders has worked with recyclers to give FHCP members tours of recycling facilities. “This lets them see the scale, scope, speed and smell of the facilities, and what happens to their packaging after it has been used by consumers and collected at curbside,” she says.
She also drives that message home in presentations to CPG manufacturers, showing pictures of “ugly, dirty, used, crushed, condensed, baled packaging.” That’s in stark contrast to what usually comes to mind when thinking about packaging, says Saunders: “the beautiful, colourful, thoughtful and intentionally designed packaging on store shelves.”
Looking beyond the shelf to what happens to packaging after use is becoming a central focus of companies’ sustainability efforts. With growing concerns over packaging waste, evolving regulations and heightened pressures from consumers and retailers, companies are rethinking packaging through a greener lens.
A new era of accountability
At the centre of this new packaging world is extended producer responsibility (EPR). Regulated at the provincial and territorial level, EPR shifts the cost and responsibility for the end-of-life management of products from municipalities to the companies that make and sell them. While producer responsibility policies have existed for decades, the focus on packaging has accelerated in recent years.
“Within a two-year period, we had four new EPR programs for packaging commence,” notes Saunders. “We now have EPR in eight provinces and one territory. So, the level of regulatory complexity is really enhanced.”
It’s a similar story in the United States, where seven states now require producers and retailers to report on and pay fees for the packaging they put into the market, notes Olga Kachook, director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), an environmental non-profit that’s part of the organization GreenBlue.
“This is a huge change from the voluntary efforts and commitments made by brands and retailers only a few years ago,” Kachook says. “Now, for example, companies are obligated to meet certain requirements like recyclability or recycled content in their packaging.”
Kachook expects key developments in sustainable packaging will continue to be driven by EPR requirements, recycled content mandates and labelling laws set out by states. “Increasingly, these policies will narrow the scope of what is considered recyclable, what materials can be used and what can be communicated to consumers to prevent greenwashing,” she says. The aim is to drive more sustainable design and, ultimately, reduce waste. “At its best, EPR is supposed to incentivize innovation and new packaging design … to improve the quality of the material going into the system and thereby improve the outcome,” Saunders says. “That’s the theory. We’re not there yet.” She points to significant cost impacts and a lack of alignment across jurisdictions as key challenges the industry is trying to work through.
Rethinking plastic packaging
Across the industry, companies continue to advance packaging solutions with EPR and the environment in mind. One of the biggest shifts is the move away from multi-layer packaging, which combines two or more distinct materials such as plastic, paper and aluminum, says Jonghun (Jay) Park, an associate professor and director of the Centre for Packaging Innovation and Sustainability at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). “These days, a lot of companies are trying to use mono-material packaging as much as possible,” he says.
Made from a single type of material, mono-materials can make packaging easier to recycle and help reduce contamination. “There are limitations to making all packaging materials mono-materials, but companies are trying,” Park adds.
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Several of the world’s biggest CPG companies are making mono-materials a focus of their sustainable packaging efforts. For example, last July, Mars launched a mono-material pouch for its Whiskas brand in the United Kingdom and Germany. Made from mono polypropylene and designed to be recycled, the company says the pouch has reduced the packaging’s carbon footprint by 46%.
Innovation can also mean rethinking familiar plastic formats. Fieldless Farms, a vertical farming company in Cornwall, Ont., developed a cardboard-based package for cut greens. The company initially used traditional clamshell packages but wanted to find a more sustainable solution. It developed a container that features a recyclable fibre base topped with a removable plastic sheet and peel-andreseal opening.
“Retailers were clearly telling us they wanted an alternative to plastic clamshells in the cut greens category, and we took that challenge head on,” says Patrick Knowles, director of market development and strategy at Fieldless Farms.
In developing the packaging, balancing freshness, usability and presentation was key. “Freshness is non-negotiable. If the product doesn’t stay crisp and high-quality, consumers will quickly pivot to other options,” says Knowles.
“Presentation was something we spent a lot of time rethinking,” he adds. “We strategically chose an opaque cardboard bottom. Traditionally, consumers flip plastic clamshells upside down in the grocery aisle to check for soggy, soiled leaves at the bottom. Because of how and where we grow indoors, our greens are consistently clean, dry and pristine. We don’t need to rely on clear plastic to prove our quality.”
Paper’s next chapter
Long a fixture on grocery store shelves, paper-based packaging is moving into applications traditionally dominated by plastic. “We’ve seen the ‘paperization’ trend continue—brands are exploring ways to move from flexible plastic packaging to paper alternatives,” says SPC’s Kachook. “This is primarily driven by the positive sustainability associations that paper has, the fact that consumers prefer paper to plastic and because paper is often more recyclable than flexible plastic packaging.”
Bonterra, Kruger Products’ household paper products brand, launched in 2022 with fully plastic-free packaging. Its paper towels and toilet paper products are wrapped in recyclable paper wrap, while facial tissue comes in recycled and recyclable cartons.
“Paper-wrapped tissue remains relatively niche in Canada, but awareness is growing,” says Steven Sage, the company’s vice-president of sustainability and corporate communications. “In-store, it continues to stand out on shelf as a clear point of differentiation. We’re seeing strong engagement from sustainability-minded shoppers who are actively looking for alternatives to plastic and appreciate a format that aligns with those expectations.”
Eco Guardian is bringing paper-products closer to home with its newly opened manufacturing facility in Aurora, Ont. The company produces compostable paper-based cups, plates and cutlery, along with HMR products such as bowls, sushi trays and containers, using materials such as FSC-certified paper, polylactic acid and bamboo. Over the next 12 to 18 months, Eco Guardian is expanding into takeout containers, burger boxes and french fry containers.
Beyond offering eco-friendly materials, the company says its Made-in-Canada packaging helps retail and foodservice operators rely less on imported packaging—and the long lead times, freight costs and supply chain risks that come with it. “These are all factors that are causing people to say, ‘maybe the Made in Canada source is a much better option,’” says marketing director Jon Barnes.
The challenges behind the change
For manufacturers, it isn’t easy to bring more sustainable packaging to market. According to McKinsey & Co.’s report, Sustainable packaging 2025: Top barriers for packaging purchasers, affordability, performance and lack of alignment on the meaning of sustainability are among the biggest barriers to widespread adoption.
Kachook echoes these findings, saying that while it has positive sustainability attributes, paper packaging can also be more expensive, lose some important performance functionalities and typically requires more water to produce than plastic packaging.
“It’s worth exploring paper innovations, but it’s also important to confirm that a new solution is, in fact, recyclable (if paper packaging has a plastic lining or is too small, it may not be accepted in recycling programs) and that it has a lower overall footprint than the packaging it is replacing,” she says.
For Fieldless Farms, packaging performance is front and centre. “Because cardboard isn’t the historical standard for cut greens, we had to approach the space with an entirely open mind,” says Knowles. “The early days involved extensive trials. We had to solve for how paperboard handles the natural humidity of the greens, how it behaves in refrigerated transport and how to get a perfect, airtight top-seal onto a non-plastic lip.”
While those trials led to a successful commercial product, Knowles says there is no perfect solution. “Today’s fully compostable or 100% plastic-free barriers often struggle to maintain the strict moisture and shelf-life controls required for fresh produce or they don’t hold up well in a refrigerated supply chain,” he says. “At this moment, our hybrid cardboard-and-film option is the best, most responsible solution for both the quality of our greens and the end consumer.”
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For Bonterra, cost and durability, as well as manufacturing considerations, were among the key challenges. “Most tissue packaging systems were built for plastic, so moving to paper requires equipment adaptation and significant trial work,” says Sage. “Paper formats also come with higher costs and more complexity at scale, which is why industry-wide adoption is still evolving.”
Where do we go from here?
As sustainable packaging continues to evolve, Knowles says consumers and grocers will demand significantly higher sustainability standards. “Retailers are setting ambitious plastic-reduction goals, and they will increasingly look to forward-thinking suppliers to help them meet those targets.” This pressure, he adds, is going to spur incredible innovation in materials science.
TMU’s Park expects to see more emphasis on circularity and designing packaging that’s optimized for the entire system, not just one stage of its life cycle. In addition, Park foresees more data-driven decision-making and greater collaboration between brands, retailers, recyclers and packaging suppliers, as no single stakeholder can create these systems alone.
“I also think the future is not about finding one perfect material,” Park adds. “It’s about designing packaging systems that balance environmental impact, production, convenience and safety.”
The key is not to focus on sustainability in isolation, he advises. “Packaging still has to protect the product, work on existing production lines, look good on the shelf and meet consumers’ expectations in many ways,” says Park. “So, I always encourage companies to test their packaging under real distribution and consumer-use conditions before making major changes.”
This article was first published in Canadian Grocer’s August 2026 issue.
