WilmingtonBiz Magazine recently featured Atlantic Packaging in their feature article, The Business of Sustainability, exploring how the company is working to reduce material use, build more circular systems and drive meaningful change across the packaging supply chain. Atlantic is in good company, sharing the feature with Green Assets, a land management and consulting firm, as two Wilmington-based companies who are embracing strategies that integrate sustainability directly into their business models.
The feature includes perspectives from Atlantic Packaging President Wes Carter and Director of Sustainability Caroline DeLoach on the complexity of sustainable packaging and Atlantic’s approach to making progress within an industry where every material and packaging decision comes with tradeoffs.
At the center of that approach are two principles: use as little material as possible and create closed loops wherever possible.
Rather than identifying a single material as the “most sustainable,” Atlantic takes a life cycle approach, considering factors such as resource and energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, recyclability and performance. Depending on the application, that can mean reducing the amount of packaging used, developing systems to recover and recycle materials, or transitioning to fiber-based and other alternatives.
The WilmingtonBiz Magazine feature also highlights A New Earth Project, Atlantic’s sustainability initiative focused on eliminating plastic pollution from the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers. Launched in 2022, the initiative works through collaboration, research and innovation to advance alternatives for common single-use packaging applications.
Another significant force shaping the future of packaging is Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Policies such as California’s SB 54 are creating new economic incentives around packaging design and end-of-life management, reinforcing the connection between environmental performance and business decisions.
For Atlantic, these shifts point to a broader opportunity: help evolve the packaging supply chain from within. By working with customers, suppliers, innovators and policymakers, Atlantic is helping reduce unnecessary material, keep valuable resources in circulation and advance better packaging solutions that can work at scale.
Read The Business of Sustainability in WilmingtonBiz Magazine.