Beyond green goals: Building a culture of sustainability through people and skills

By: Sonal Jain

Packaging touches consumers' lives as the first and last moment of truth while the consumer consumes the product. Packaging protects products from contamination, preserves quality and enables safe transportation, preventing the environmental footprint associated with spoiled food and damaged goods. 

Yet energy consumption, production losses, water use and end-of-life recovery influence its lifecycle impact. Addressing these challenges requires technical innovation and operational discipline, supported by employees who understand how their decisions affect resources and performance.

Eurostat reports that the European Union generated 79.7 million tonnes of packaging waste in 2023, including 15.8 million tonnes of plastic. Regulations such as the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation and India's Extended Producer Responsibility rules for plastic packaging increase accountability.

For manufacturers, meeting these expectations requires sustainability to become part of everyday work, supported by workforce capabilities and clear responsibilities.

A sustainability strategy becomes effective when employees understand how their work influences resource consumption. On a packaging production line, an operator who identifies a temperature deviation early can prevent material rejection. 

A maintenance technician who detects compressed air leaks can reduce energy consumption, while a quality specialist who investigates recurring defects can prevent repeated production losses.

Developing these capabilities requires role-specific training. Operators need to recognise process deviations, maintenance teams must identify equipment inefficiencies, and quality teams need structured problem-solving methods such as Pareto analysis and 5-Why. 

Changeover teams can apply SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die) principles to reduce setup time and start-up waste.

Training must extend beyond classroom sessions. Practical assessments, supervisor feedback and shift handovers help establish whether employees can apply their learning consistently. 

Documenting recurring problems and sharing corrective actions across shifts also prevents teams from repeatedly solving the same issues. These practices turn individual knowledge into organisational capability.

Sustainability also depends on decisions made during product development. Packaging design involves balancing material consumption, product protection, manufacturing requirements and end-of-life recovery. 

A lighter structure may reduce material use and transportation emissions, but it must retain the barrier, strength and sealing performance required to protect its contents. 

If it increases product damage or manufacturing rejects, the anticipated environmental benefit may diminish.

Evaluating these trade-offs requires collaboration among designers, material specialists, procurement teams, engineers and customers. 

For example, mono-material polyethene laminated tubes can improve compatibility with recycling streams, but achieving the necessary barrier performance for oral care, cosmetic or pharmaceutical formulations requires careful material engineering. Inks, adhesives, shoulders and caps also influence recyclability.

Lifecycle assessment under ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 provides a framework for comparing environmental impacts across raw materials, manufacturing, transportation and end-of-life treatment. 

Employees involved in product development need to understand the assumptions behind these assessments, including functional units and recycling scenarios. Integrating this knowledge into design reviews helps teams make informed decisions before changes become expensive to implement.

Environmental improvements are sustained when employees can identify inefficiencies, interpret performance data and act on their findings. Measuring electricity consumption in kilowatt-hours per tonne of output helps teams identify inefficient operation and excessive idle time. 

Water monitoring can reveal leaks and unnecessary cleaning cycles, provided hygiene and quality requirements are maintained.

Material yield requires similar attention. Start-up and changeover losses can consume substantial resources without appearing clearly in routine rejection reports. 

Tracking material inputs against saleable output helps employees locate these losses, investigate their causes and assess corrective measures.

Managers play an important role in making this information actionable. Regular team reviews can examine rejection rates, energy and water intensity, material yield and waste recovery. Employees should understand what each indicator measures, which factors they can influence and how their actions contribute to improvement.

Recovering scrap reduces disposal, but preventing it also avoids the materials, energy and labour consumed during production. Helping employees understand this distinction encourages them to address inefficiencies at their source.

Skills and data create opportunities for improvement, but leadership determines whether these opportunities translate into consistent practices. 

Managers must establish clear responsibilities, encourage employees to raise concerns and ensure identified problems receive timely attention. Without follow-through, training and improvement initiatives risk becoming isolated activities.

Human resources can support this process by incorporating relevant sustainability competencies into role expectations, learning plans and performance discussions. 

Production managers can reinforce these competencies through routine reviews, while cross-functional teams can share lessons from successful interventions. Employee suggestions should be assessed against resource savings, product quality, feasibility and operational risk, with effective solutions documented for wider application.

Progress must also be measured beyond training attendance and initiatives launched. Stronger evidence includes demonstrated skill application, corrective actions that remain effective over time, lower rejection rates and reduced resource consumption relative to output.

Building a culture of sustainability requires consistency between what organisations teach, what managers reinforce and what performance measures recognise. 

When employees have the skills to identify inefficiencies, the confidence to raise concerns and the opportunity to contribute to solutions, environmental responsibility becomes part of everyday work. 

Sustainability goals gain practical meaning through informed decisions, collective accountability and continuous improvement.