The Consumer Goods Forum project may add a useful layer at the crossroads of packaging and sustainability. It could complement established sustainability guidelines.

In mid-January the Consumer Goods Forum’s Global Packaging Project met to work on establishing a common industry language for packaging and sustainability. The organization also outlined final terms for launching pilot projects.

This initiative represents an effort on the part of retailers and consumer packaged goods companies to work together in driving global change in packaging as it relates to the environment.

According to a post from the Consumer Goods Forum, next steps include:
• Validating output from the project, and
• Approving the final report by November 2010.

It’s always a good thing to define and clarify guidelines on packaging and sustainability. But it will be interesting to see whether the Consumer Goods Forum’s effort adds anything new to support already established comprehensive guidelines to packaging sustainability claims. The Greener Package Guidelines to Sustainability Claims were developed by Environmental Packaging Intl., with input from Packaging Knowledge Group LLC, and were released late in 2009 by Greener Package.

The Greener Package Guidelines to Sustainability Claims will be used as a basis for the third-party validation of claims made by suppliers submitting their product data to the Greener Product Database.