Substantiated Sustainability – Why ‘This Box Is Recyclable’ Is No Longer Enough for F&B Brands

For years, food and beverage brands have treated sustainability claims on packaging as a marketing exercise. Print the recycling symbol. Add “made from recyclable materials” to the carton. Maybe mention post-consumer content in a press release. Check the box, move on.

That era is over.

Extended Producer Responsibility laws now active in seven US states don’t care what your packaging says. They care what your packaging is. Every material component must be classified, weighed, reported, and verified. If your corrugated case claims to be recyclable but uses adhesives or coatings that contaminate recycling streams, you’ll pay higher eco-modulated fees, not because you lied, but because the material doesn’t actually perform as recyclable in practice.

At the same time, the Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides, the framework governing environmental marketing claims, last updated in 2012, are under formal review. The FTC requested public comment on potential updates in 2022, drawing thousands of responses focused on recyclability and compostability claims. While the updated Guides have not yet been released, the direction is clear: unsubstantiated sustainability claims on packaging are heading toward the same regulatory scrutiny as misleading health claims on food labels.

For F&B brands, this creates a dual risk: regulatory penalties from EPR noncompliance and reputational damage from sustainability claims your packaging can’t back up.

The Substantiation Gap: What “Recyclable” Actually Means Under EPR

Here’s the disconnect most F&B companies are sitting on right now.

When a brand puts “recyclable” on a package, they usually mean the primary material, the corrugated board, the paperboard carton, the PET bottle, is theoretically recyclable. And in many cases, that’s technically true.

But EPR laws don’t evaluate packaging by its primary material alone. They evaluate the complete packaging unit, including adhesives, coatings, inks, labels, liners, closures, and any multi-material laminations. And they evaluate it against a specific standard: can this packaging actually be collected and processed by the recycling infrastructure in this state?

This distinction matters enormously for food and beverage packaging because F&B products commonly use materials that appear recyclable but aren’t in practice:

• Multi-layer laminated pouches used for coffee, snacks, pet food, and shelf-stable products, the layers can’t be separated at standard recycling facilities
• Paperboard cartons with poly or wax coatings for frozen foods and beverages, the coating contaminates the paper recycling stream
• Shrink sleeves made from PVC or PETG on bottles, they interfere with the PET recycling process and often result in the entire bottle being rejected
• Adhesive labels that don’t release cleanly during the recycling wash process
• Mixed-material rigid containers (e.g., PP body with PE lid) that require manual separation consumers rarely perform

Every one of these materials carries a recycling symbol or a recyclability claim on millions of F&B packages today. Under EPR, every one of them will be classified in a higher eco-modulated fee bracket because they don’t meet the practical recyclability standards states are enforcing.

The Three Costs of Unsubstantiated Sustainability Claims

1. Higher EPR Fees

Eco-modulated fee structures in California, Colorado, Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington are designed to reward genuinely recyclable materials and penalize the rest. The fee differential isn’t marginal, it’s structural.

In Maine, packaging materials that are not readily recyclable incur fees at 2 to 5 times the rate of the most expensive readily recyclable material type. Materials that don’t meet post-consumer recycled content goals get an additional 10% surcharge. Materials not certified as free of intentionally-added toxics get another 10%. These surcharges stack.

For an F&B company shipping hundreds of SKUs into multiple EPR states, the difference between packaging that actually qualifies as recyclable and packaging that merely claims to be recyclable could represent tens of thousands of dollars in annual fee differences per state.

2. Regulatory Exposure on Green Claims

The FTC’s Green Guides govern how companies can market environmental attributes. The core principle is straightforward: environmental claims must be substantiated, specific, and not misleading. Under the current Guides, a recyclable claim is considered deceptive unless recycling facilities are available to at least 60% of consumers where the product is sold. A blanket “recyclable” claim on packaging that isn’t actually recyclable in the consumer’s local infrastructure is exactly the kind of claim the Guides are designed to address, and with an update under review since 2022, scrutiny is expected to tighten further.

For F&B brands, this risk is amplified by the fact that packaging is the most visible touchpoint with consumers. It’s on the shelf, in the home, and increasingly on social media. An unsubstantiated claim on a cereal box or a juice bottle isn’t buried in a corporate report, it’s in the consumer’s hands every day.

3. Consumer Trust Erosion

Consumer skepticism about corporate sustainability claims has reached critical mass. A YouGov survey across 18 international markets found that 55% of consumers are skeptical of brands’ sustainability claims, with only 9% saying they believe them. In the US specifically, 55% of consumers report skepticism. The Hartman Group’s Sustainability 2025: Do Consumers Care? report, published September 2025, found that 58% of consumers have boycotted companies for reasons related to greenwashing. And a 2023 global survey by PicoNext found 91% of consumers believe at least some brands engage in greenwashing.

When a brand’s packaging says “recyclable” but a consumer discovers their municipality can’t actually recycle it, the result isn’t just confusion, it’s a loss of trust. And in the F&B space, where brand loyalty is directly tied to perceived values, trust loss translates directly to revenue loss.

What Substantiated Sustainability Actually Looks Like

So if “this box is recyclable” isn’t enough, what is? Substantiated sustainability in the EPR era means your packaging claims are backed by three things:

Most F&B companies don’t have any of these three in place today. They have invoices from suppliers, maybe some spec sheets in a shared drive, and a general assumption that their corrugated is recyclable because it’s corrugated. That assumption is now a liability.

Why This Is a Packaging Engineering Problem, Not a Marketing Problem

When most companies hear “substantiate your sustainability claims,” their instinct is to assign it to the marketing or legal team. Draft new label copy. Get a legal review on the claim language. Maybe hire a sustainability consultant.

But the real work isn’t about what your label says. It’s about what your packaging is made of. And that’s a packaging engineering problem.

An accredited packaging engineer can do what a marketing team and a sustainability consultant cannot:

• Evaluate material composition at the component level, not just the primary substrate, but the complete bill of materials including coatings, adhesives, and inks that affect recyclability
• Identify alternatives that maintain product protection while qualifying for lower eco-modulated fees, for example, switching from a multi-layer laminated pouch to a mono-material PE pouch that performs equally well for your product but is actually recyclable
• Design packaging for recyclability from the start, selecting substrates, adhesives, and closure systems that work together as a recyclable unit, not just as individual materials
• Prototype and test rapidly, so you can validate that alternative materials maintain shelf life, product safety, and brand appearance before committing to a full production run
• Create spec sheets, CAD files, and pallet configurations that document exactly what’s in each packaging component, the same documentation that feeds directly into EPR reporting

This is the difference between a packaging supplier who sells you materials and a packaging partner who engineers solutions. In the EPR era, that distinction has financial consequences.

Starting With What You Have: The Plant Audit Review

Before you can substantiate your sustainability claims, you need to know what claims your current packaging can actually support. For most F&B companies, that starts with a Plant Audit Review.

A PAR isn’t a marketing exercise. It’s an engineering assessment that walks through your facility, catalogs every packaging component in your operation, and evaluates each one against practical recyclability standards. The output is a clear picture of:

• Which materials genuinely qualify as recyclable under current EPR state definitions
• Which materials claim recyclability but don’t meet the practical standard, and how much that’s costing you in eco-modulated fees
• Where material substitutions could improve recyclability without compromising product protection, shelf life, or brand presentation
• Where you’re over-specifying materials, using heavier or more complex packaging than your product requires, which inflates both material costs and EPR reporting tonnage
• What documentation gaps exist between what your packaging is and what your marketing claims say it is

Think of it as a compliance and cost optimization audit combined. You get a roadmap for reducing EPR fees, improving the accuracy of your sustainability claims, and cutting material costs, all from the same assessment.

Beyond Compliance: Sustainability as Competitive Advantage

Here’s the opportunity most F&B brands are missing in the EPR conversation.

The companies that treat EPR as a compliance burden will spend money reacting to each new state’s requirements, scrambling for data, paying higher fees for materials they haven’t optimized, and making defensive label changes to avoid legal exposure.

The companies that treat EPR as a catalyst for packaging optimization will come out ahead on costs, consumer trust, and brand positioning.

Consider what happens when you genuinely substantiate your sustainability claims:

• Lower EPR fees because your packaging qualifies for the lowest eco-modulated rates in every state
• Lower material costs because right-sized, well-engineered packaging uses less material by weight while maintaining performance
• Defensible marketing claims that can withstand FTC scrutiny, retailer sustainability audits, and consumer skepticism
• Retailer preference, major retailers are increasingly requiring packaging sustainability documentation from suppliers, and the brands that can produce it gain shelf space advantages
• Consumer trust built on specificity rather than vague claims, “this carton is made from 100% recyclable paperboard with water-based inks” is more credible and more compelling than “please recycle”

Eleven additional states are exploring EPR bills right now: Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Companies that invest in genuinely recyclable packaging design today won’t just be compliant in seven states, they’ll be ready for many more.

What to Do Right Now

If you’re an F&B brand selling into any EPR state, here are the concrete steps to move from unsubstantiated claims to documented sustainability:

1. Audit your current packaging claims against your actual materials. For every SKU, can you document the material composition of every packaging component? Can you verify that it meets recyclability standards in the states where you sell? If the answer is no, that’s your starting point.
2. Get a packaging engineer involved, not just a supplier. You need someone who can evaluate your materials at the component level and recommend alternatives that improve recyclability without compromising product performance. Most packaging distributors don’t offer this capability.
3. Centralize your packaging specifications. If your material specs live in email threads, scattered PDFs, and supplier quote sheets, you can’t substantiate anything. You need a single system of record for every material spec across every SKU, and it needs to stay current as materials change.
4. Schedule a Plant Audit Review. A comprehensive PAR gives you the baseline data for both EPR reporting and sustainability substantiation. It identifies quick wins (materials you can swap immediately for better recyclability and lower fees) and long-term opportunities (packaging redesigns that reduce costs and improve environmental performance).
5. Align your packaging partner with your compliance needs. Your packaging supplier’s technology stack is now a compliance asset or a compliance liability. If they can’t provide material weight data by SKU, track specifications across all packaging categories, and offer engineering support for material redesigns, you’re carrying compliance risk in your supply chain.

How Korpack Solves This

Korpack is built on exactly the premise this blog has made: substantiated sustainability requires packaging engineering, material documentation, and integrated data, not marketing copy. Founded by a packaging engineer and headquartered in Bloomingdale, Illinois, Korpack serves North American food and beverage brands as a single-source partner with the engineering capability and technology infrastructure to back up sustainability claims with evidence.

Here’s how Korpack’s capabilities map directly to the three pillars of substantiated sustainability:

The integration is the real advantage. When your packaging engineer, your materials supplier, your co-packer, and your data infrastructure are all the same partner, sustainability substantiation stops being an annual scramble across disconnected vendors, and becomes something your operation produces as a byproduct of how it already runs.

The Bottom Line

The days of sustainability-as-marketing are ending. EPR laws don’t reward good intentions or attractive label claims. They reward, and increasingly require, documented, verifiable, engineering-backed proof that your packaging does what you say it does.

For food and beverage brands, this is simultaneously a risk and an opportunity. The risk is real and immediate: higher EPR fees, regulatory exposure, and consumer trust erosion from claims your packaging can’t back up. The opportunity is just as real: brands that invest in genuinely sustainable, well-documented packaging will pay lower fees, build stronger consumer relationships, and be ahead of the curve as EPR expands to new states.

But getting there requires more than new label copy. It requires packaging engineering, material science, and a technology infrastructure that tracks what your packaging is made of, not just what it costs.

The question isn’t whether your packaging is sustainable. It’s whether you can prove it.

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