Wal-Mart Switches to Corn-Based Plastic Packaging

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Wal-Mart is going green. The retail giant, which is also the nation's largest grocery seller, is beginning to switch from petroleum-based to corn-based plastic packaging.

Wal-Mart is going green.


The retail giant, which is also the nation's largest grocery seller, is beginning to switch from petroleum-based to corn-based plastic packaging.


The first substitution, starting Nov. 1, involves 114 million clear-plastic clamshell containers used annually by the retailer for cut fruit, herbs, strawberries and brussels sprouts, Wal-Mart executive Matt Kistler said yesterday at a conference in Philadelphia.


"With this change to packaging made from corn, we will save the equivalent of 800,000 gallons of gasoline and reduce more than 11 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions," said Kistler, vice president for product development and private brands for the company's Sam's Club division.


"This is a way to make a change positive for the environment and for business," he said at the Sustainable Packaging Forum at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel.


The adoption of environmentally friendly packaging at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has an unparalleled ability to mandate change in the consumer products world, is a huge win for NatureWorks L.L.C., a Minnesota-based division of agricultural commodity giant Cargill Inc.


It comes as high oil and natural gas prices -- the sources for most plastics -- are ratcheting up the cost of plastic materials.


Kistler did not say whether the new plastic costs more or less than the materials it replaces, but he said Wal-Mart expects the price of corn-based plastics to be less volatile than those of petroleum-based plastics.


Snehal Desai, global commercial director for NatureWorks, said the company's plastic -- known as PLA, or polylactic acid -- is competitively priced with petroleum-based plastic, which is commonly used for soda and water bottles.


A big difference between PLA plastic and its petroleum-based competitors -- beyond its origin in an annually renewable resource -- is PLA's ability to be composted in carefully regulated municipal operations. It is also recyclable, like most other plastics.


Containers and packaging accounted for 32 percent of municipal solid wastes by weight in 2003, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.


Wal-Mart spokeswoman Tara Stewart said the company, which will feature the packaging in its 3,779 Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and Neighborhood Market stores in the United States, is just beginning to figure out the lifecycle of the new plastics. "We don't have answers for everything yet," she said.


Kistler said the new plastic also will be used to make calling cards and gift cards sold at Wal-Mart for the holidays.


In addition, it will be used for the windows in cake and doughnut boxes, where it provides still another benefit: Because the corn-based plastic "breathes," condensation does not form inside the pastry boxes. Kistler said that during a test, doughnut sales increased.


Small retailers are also getting into the act. Fair Food, which operates a farm stand at Reading Terminal Market selling mostly organic products from local farms, recently switched to biodegradable cellophane bags made from a component of plants and trees.


At $95 for 1,000 bags, including shipping, that's about double the cost of the bags the nonprofit retailer used previously, said manager Ann Karlen.


But environmentally friendly packages are not always more expensive, said Margaret Papadakis, senior buyer of packaging for Starbucks Coffee Co.


The Seattle company will soon introduce new packaging for many of its chocolate candies that eliminates harmful bleached paperboard, uses half the material of the old design, and is expected to save $500,000 a year, she said.


The Philadelphia conference focused on "sustainability," a term that refers not just to a material's ability to be recycled, but also how valuable it remains when it is reused. In plastics, for instance, the goal is to avoid the downward spiral into less valuable products such as park benches.


"Just because a material or package is recyclable doesn't necessarily mean it is sustainable," said David Luttenberger, director of Packaging Strategies Inc., of West Chester, which produced the conference.


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Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News