Sustainable Sourcing | UP Scorecard User Guide

Sustainable sourcing is the first step towards circularity. The UP Scorecard looks at sustainable sourcing from the environmental performance point of view and focuses on the origin of the technical materials used to manufacture new food packaging and foodware items.

In general, renewable feedstock including bio-based raw materials and recycled raw materials are considered in the definition of sustainable sourcing.

With the Sustainable Sourcing metric, the UP Scorecard therefore considers how much recycled or bio-based content products contain and whether products have third-party certified sourcing practices.

Many experts interviewed for this project spoke to the importance of sustainable sourcing when considering the environmental tradeoffs of different packaging materials. Two priorities emerged from these discussions: increase the use of post-consumer recycled content and, for bio-based materials, reward sustainable agriculture and forestry practices.

In addition to reducing lifecycle water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, mixing post-consumer recycled content into the packaging material closes the loop and creates demand for additional recycling while reducing the need to extract virgin materials.

Indicator: scale from 1 to 5

Sustainable Sourcing of a product is determined in the UP Scorecard by two factors:

Amount of post-consumer recycled content (PCR content)

The integration of PCR content into the production of food packaging items is not automatic. In the tool, certain materials contain by default a certain fraction of recycled material, reflecting the current maturity of different recycling industries (glass, metal, and PET are considered to be mature). Other materials have 0% PCR by default because they are currently not recycled at scale, for diverse reasons (usually technical or economical). This is the case for polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), or polystyrene (PS). For certain materials, PCR content is not recommended for food contact articles due to cross-contamination issues (paper and board).

Certifications: sustainable agriculture and forestry practices for bio-based materials

The following third-party certifications are recognized to reward sustainable biomass production:

"Best" certifications:
"Good" certification

Considering these factors (amount of post-consumer recycled content; sustainability certifications for bio-based materials), a rating between 1 and 5 is given to a product according to the following criteria (ratings are then normalized to a score from 1/worse to 100/best):

Example scores

The graphic below shows the Sustainable Sourcing score calculated in the tool, for disposable food containers made of different materials with varying PCR contents and certifications, and a reusable alternative.