Catania Oils

Jeff Partridge serves as Environmental, Health, Safety, and Sustainability Director at Catania Oils, leading initiatives that strengthen workplace safety, environmental stewardship, regulatory compliance, and sustainability. With expertise in EHS management and emergency services, he fosters a culture of operational excellence and continuous improvement.

In just a few short years, both the definition and effective practice of environmental sustainability have changed significantly. The original mandate was simple – reduce waste and recycle discarded materials to minimize environmental impact and preserve natural resources. Today’s sustainability is more complex and requires a sound business strategy, more innovative thinking and a willingness to dive into other aspects of manufacturing, including regulatory compliance, packaging engineering, food safety, supply chain management, and operational efficiency.

There are several emerging challenges that must be considered in today’s uncharted landscape.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

By far, this is the most complex challenge that small to mid-sized manufacturers face. The responsibility for managing packaging materials at the end of their lifecycle increasingly falls to the manufacturer. While several states have adopted regulations for recyclables, the requirements of each state vary and include a wide range of considerations:

• Tracking packaging components, down to caps and labels;

• Identifying brand ownership through legal and contract reviews;

• Ecomodulation, which involves bonuses for packaging using recycled content or that is easier to recycle, and maluses for that packaging that is not.

Smaller manufacturers face a disproportionate burden compared to their larger counterparts, spending time and money piecing together disparate elements of their products’ journey to fit each state’s evolving requirements. As more states pass this legislation, the complexity and resources needed to comply increase.

PCR Requirements and Material Availability

Requirements for post-consumer recycled content are also changing. Increased regulations require manufacturers to use greater amounts of recycled materials in packaging. A non-trivial challenge is to balance environmental objectives against market realities.

• Recycled materials carry higher costs than virgin materials and remain in limited supply.

• Larger manufacturers have greater purchasing leverage of this finite resource.

• Certain plastics, depending on their composition or color, for example, limit their future use.

Progress in sustainability matters, but so does an honest look at unintended consequences. Over time, regulatory costs associated with producer responsibility and packaging requirements may become embedded throughout operational systems and broader supply chains. To ensure long-term success, we need to figure out how to balance environmental concerns and manufacturing sustainability.

Recycling is Complex

Most consumers see recycling as relatively straightforward – separate materials into a few bins and let the process do the rest. Manufacturing realities tell a different story.

Oil packaging, in particular, has its own set of challenges. Bottles containing residual oils require cleaning treatment, transportation and additional processing before materials can be sent to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and enter recycling streams. That process utilizes additional resources, including water, electricity, and fuel.

Due to regulatory challenges across states, materials accepted in one region may be rejected in another. Packaging choices that look sustainable on the surface may create larger problems that consumers never see. An example of this is packaging color. Certain color choices may improve a product’s shelf life or appearance, but reduce future recycling options.

“Sustainability and business objectives can coexist.”

To be truly sustainable, manufacturers need to evaluate not only how their packaging works today, but what happens to those materials years later. This is where prevention and engineering come in. Catania Oils employs multiple strategies to reduce environmental impact before waste is generated. Reducing plastic usage in lightweight PET bottles reduces consumption without compromising the product’s integrity.

Small improvements matter – thinning PET bottles, even reducing a package design by fractions of a gram, may seem insignificant on its own. When applied across millions of units, measurable reductions in waste and costs are achieved.

Food manufacturing packaging must be sturdy enough to withstand myriad environments – production, transportation, warehousing, shelving, grocery carts and pantries. And after that long journey, the product must maintain its stated shelf-life expectations and performance standards.

Sustainable materials hold promise, but manufacturers need proof that these environmental solutions also satisfy expectations of food safety, durability, quality standards and operational realities.

Sustainability and business objectives can coexist, but solving these challenges involves more voices and deeper knowledge. Trade associations, engineering teams, legal advisors, sustainability organizations and industry peers need to come together and share insights and experiences to help better inform and streamline the regulatory process.

Manufacturing sustainability should not be defined solely by mandates, reporting requirements or the percentage of recycled content.

It should be defined by innovative manufacturers willing to step up, engineer faster and collaborate beyond their walls to solve these new and emerging regulatory challenges without compromising the quality, affordability and product integrity that keep them in business.