Meet the winners of the 2022 Sustainable Packaging Innovation Award | So Good News

The democratization of climate action has long been part of the creation of programs such as the Gigaton project or the Project Circular connector. We collaborate with our partners to take action, for example by promoting circular solutions, accelerating cooperation on renewable energy and zero waste, or enabling more ambitious goals with the Gigaton project. Today we are connected US Plastics Pact Announces Inauguration at GreenBiz’s VERGE 2022 Conference Sustainable Packaging Innovation Award Winners.

Walmart donated the use of its recently launched Circular Connector platform to help drive innovation for these awards. Award winners cover four main categories: recycle, reuse, compost and reduce. Each winner demonstrates scalability, cost-effectiveness or a customer-first proposition. Congratulations to the winners!

In April, we launched the first phase of the Circular Connector program, inviting innovators to submit their solutions for consideration by Walmart. Solutions will be tested against Walmart’s Sustainable Packaging goals and those outlined in the Connector app. Last week we made the Circulate Connector available to everyone for free Walmart’s Sustainability Hub. And now, in the Circular Connector system, about 150 solutions are publicly available.

Scaling packaging innovation

By making the Circular Connector open source, our hope is that it will encourage companies to move faster to implement design changes that help create a circular economy for plastics, even our direct competitors. Constant packaging changes don’t happen in a silo and require life-cycle thinking. Today, we still have packaging that can confuse consumers: Can it be recycled? Compostable? Wait… Do I have to remove the label before recycling? Next.

Our recent 2022 Sustainable Development Summit, Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon said, “Our job is to do everything we do in such a way that the path of least resistance is the most sustainable or restorative approach.” This is a change in mindset that we are working with our suppliers, NGO partners and others. Companies have the ability to design packages that help reduce the use of plastics and improve circularity.

I hope that all like-minded companies who have been silently asking how to achieve a sustainable packaging solution will use Circular Connector to start their next innovation. We can’t wait any longer. Here are the ideas. Let’s scale them.