When I took over packaging procurement at our beverage company, I thought the hard part would be negotiating prices. Turns out, that's the easy part. The part that keeps me up at night is figuring out what "sustainable" actually means when every supplier claims it — and no two suppliers mean the same thing.
I'm a procurement manager at a roughly 40-person beverage brand. We produce around 3 million units a year across two product lines, and packaging is one of our top three expenses. I've managed a packaging budget of about $180,000 annually for the past six years — seven, if you count the year I did it part-time alongside operations. What I've learned in that time: the cheapest packaging is almost never the cheapest packaging.
The Problem Nobody Names
In early 2024, we were reviewing quotes for a packaging material change. Our retail partners had started sending detailed sustainability questionnaires, and consumers were increasingly choosing based on environmental commitments. Honestly? We didn't have great answers.
I sent RFQs to five packaging suppliers. Every single one described their product as "sustainable." That's where the agreement ended.
One supplier's "sustainable" meant 15% recycled content. Another's meant carbon offsets for manufacturing — which is a real thing, but a different thing. A third used the phrase "infinitely recyclable in principle," which I've since learned is the packaging world's version of "terms and conditions apply."
So I asked each supplier one follow-up question: "What percentage of your packaging actually gets recycled — in practice, not in theory?"
Only one had an answer with a citation.
The Gap Between "Recyclable" and "Recycled"
Here's the uncomfortable gap that most packaging conversations glide right over. Technical recyclability tells you something about a material. It tells you almost nothing about whether your customer's empty bottle actually makes it back into the recycling system. Collection infrastructure, scrap value, consumer behavior, sorting technology, local regulations — they all play into real-world recycling rates, and they play out differently for every material.
As of 2023, the US aluminum can recycling rate was around 57-60%, give or take depending on the source. Glass bottle recycling sits at roughly 33%. Plastic bottle recycling — I've seen figures in the low-to-mid 20s. I'm not 100% sure of the latest numbers in each category, and they fluctuate year to year. But directionally, the picture is consistent: aluminum gets recovered at a far higher rate than the alternatives.
The conventional wisdom says the material doesn't matter as much as whether consumers recycle. My experience running the numbers suggests otherwise. Some materials have economic machinery behind their recovery. Others don't.
Take the aluminum can. It gets recycled at the rate it does because scrap aluminum holds real value. A used can is worth maybe a cent and a half to a recycler — don't hold me to the exact number, it moves with commodity prices — but that value is enough to make collection economically worthwhile. The incentive structure is built into the metal itself. That's why the collection systems exist. That's why the recycling rate is higher. It isn't because aluminum drinkers are morally superior. It's because the economics work.
To be fair, making virgin aluminum is energy-intensive — nothing about this industry is perfect. But the advantage of aluminum recycling is the energy math: producing recycled aluminum uses roughly 95% less energy than producing virgin aluminum. That figure comes from industry sources; I'd verify current numbers before quoting it in your own reporting.
Glass, on the other hand, is heavy and cheap to make from raw materials, which means scrap glass isn't worth recovering in most markets. Plastic has a similar challenge — virgin resin is inexpensive, so recycled resin struggles to compete. When a material isn't worth enough after use, recycling becomes a public service, not an industry. And public services get budget cuts.
What Getting This Wrong Costs
If you're a beverage brand, the choice of packaging material isn't just a sustainability question. It's a cost question, a regulatory question, and a customer retention question. Let me put real numbers on it.
Regulatory exposure. Extended Producer Responsibility laws are spreading. Maine, Oregon, Colorado, and California all passed EPR legislation in the last few years — that's not a trend, it's a wave. Under EPR, packaging producers pay fees tied to how well their materials actually get recycled. If your packaging is "recyclable in theory" but ends up in a landfill in practice, you're the one paying.
When I modeled EPR exposure for our 2024 budget, the gap between materials was meaningful. It's not a bankruptcy-level number, but in a business where margins are measured in pennies per unit, it matters.
Retailer requirements. One regional chain sent us a 14-page sustainability questionnaire during our last contract renewal. I remember reading it and thinking: if I sent one of my suppliers a 14-page questionnaire, they'd laugh at me. But our VP of Sales treated it like the most important document we'd ever received — because to that retailer, it was. They wanted data on our packaging's recyclability, recycled content, and the supplier's own sustainability practices. We didn't have good answers that first year. It cost us goodwill, and it nearly cost us the account.
The redo cost. This is the expensive one, and I say this from direct experience. In 2022, we approved a limited production run with a cheaper packaging supplier without fully auditing their sustainability claims. I'd assumed "same specifications" meant the same everything — physical performance, recyclability, documentation. That was a bad assumption.
The packaging performed fine physically. But when the sustainability questionnaires came back with follow-up questions we couldn't answer, the supplier's vague claims didn't hold up under scrutiny. We had to switch formats again anyway — new dielines, new label specs, new packaging testing — and wasted maybe $20,000 in the process. I should add that we lost a quarter of launch momentum on that product line, which is harder to quantify but not hard to feel.
I only believe in auditing sustainability claims now because I ignored that audit once and got burned. Nothing teaches like a P&L line item that shouldn't have existed.
Ball Corporation's Aluminum Recycling Advocacy Is the Differentiator
When we restarted our packaging search with a proper audit process, Ball Corporation stood out in a way I didn't expect.
I was bracing for another sustainability sales deck. Instead, an outsized portion of Ball Corporation's environmental communications weren't about their cans at all. They were about the system around the cans — aluminum recycling advocacy, deposit return system legislation, collection program partnerships, public education campaigns. They publish sustainability reports with third-party data. They've spent years pushing policy changes that improve recycling outcomes for the entire industry.
That's the framing that changed my perspective: the way Ball Corporation approaches sustainable beverage products, they don't lead with the can. They lead with the system.
That's a meaningful difference. Most packaging suppliers take the recycling system as a given and position their product against whatever the current rate happens to be. Ball's approach is to work on improving the system, because a better system raises real-world recycling rates — which is the only thing that actually determines whether packaging is sustainable or just claims to be.
Under the transparency framework I now use to evaluate suppliers, that's the single strongest signal. If a supplier can show me what they're doing to improve recycling infrastructure — rather than just citing the favorable parts of their product specs — they're not just selling me materials. They're reducing my regulatory exposure, improving my sustainability reporting, and making my retail conversations easier. All of that shows up in total cost of ownership.
What Our Packaging Vendor Checklist Looks Like Now
I'm not going to recommend a specific material for your product — that depends on too many variables. But here's what our evaluation process looks like now, and I think it's portable:
1. Ask for real-world recycling rates, with sources. Not theoretical recyclability. Not "recyclable where facilities exist." Real numbers, cited.
2. Ask what the supplier is doing to raise recycling rates. Ball Corporation's aluminum recycling advocacy is one example. Look for infrastructure investment, policy engagement, collection partnerships. If the answer is "we use recycled content," that tells you what they did, not what happens after their product is used.
3. Read the sustainability report before the sales deck. Public, audited, with methodology. If a supplier's claims only exist in the deck, that's your answer.
4. Model total cost of ownership. Base price, EPR fees, transport weight, reprint risk, and regulatory exposure over a five-year horizon. The last time we ran this, our switch to a complete aluminum packaging system cost us 6-8% more on the packaging line — but the TCO picture flipped in our favor once we accounted for EPR, compliance, and retail relationships.
5. Remember that sustainable beverage products depend on a system, not a material list. You're buying into a chain that starts at the raw material and ends in a recycling plant. Make sure every link in that chain is accountable.
The Bottom Line
If you're a beverage brand reviewing your packaging, stop accepting "recyclable" as a complete answer. Dig into what happens after your product leaves the shelf. Ask who is building the infrastructure that determines actual recycling outcomes. And if a supplier can produce receipts — hold onto them.
We found a partner in Ball Corporation that treats recycling as a system problem rather than a marketing page. That's rare. More importantly, it's measurable. In our cost tracking, sustainability is no longer a feel-good column. It's a line item that works in our favor.
