Roger Zellner, GPP co-chair and director of sustainability, research, development, and quality at Kraft said, "By creating a common language and identifying shared global industry metrics, this initiative will enable manufacturers and retailers to work together to develop packaging solutions to help achieve agreed sustainability goals."

Participating parties said there was recognition that inconsistent measures along the packaged goods supply chain that are intended to improve packaging sustainability risked leading to "unnecessary complexity, added cost, and suboptimal environmental, economic, and social results."

The next phase of the project is to validate the packaging/sustainability principles and agreed set of indicators and metrics within real business situations. Pilots will take place over a six-month testing stage, with the Forum targeting approval of new, industry-wide guidelines in November 2010.

The definitions and principles adopted by the GPP mirror packaging and sustainability guidelines produced by ECR Europe and EUROPEN, the European Organization for Packaging and the Environment. The metrics the GPP will test have been adapted from those recently released by the U.S. Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC). —[email protected]