Recently I went to visit a premium cider maker and they informed me that Marks & Spencer and the like carry out a three-day audit on the products it sells to protect its brand integrity.
Brand integrity is extremely important, its how consumers perceive your brand and if not maintained it could be the difference between a positive or negative company reputation.
Consumers are now more focused than ever on their sustainability efforts and so there has been an increased interest into how brands, particularly those within the food and drink sector, are packaging products and managing waste.
Controlling brand integrity, when it comes to waste packaging, can sometimes be difficult for non-manufacturing brands, i.e. the successful brands that have outgrown their manufacturing capacity so outsource. This is because everything is in the hands of a subcontractor.
One of the main ways is to always be part of the sustainability talks. Be clear that the products associated with your brand, particularly the increasingly scrutinised packaging, is proactively minimising its potential plastic pollution, is decomposable and is meeting the needs of the consumer.
Think aluminium instead of plastic, bamboo instead of paper – push for your brand to be an industry leader when it comes to making positive change to waste management.
Ribena is currently testing out paper straws on its cartons in a bid to fight plastic and Yorkshire Packaging Systems has introduced a 100% recyclable barrier shrink film for its poultry customers, a world-first.
Implementing a waste tracking system is also another solution towards maintaining integrity, allowing a brand and its manufacturers to monitor, evaluate and record the waste produced from its products whilst being able to move closer towards zero waste operations.
This enables a better understanding of where waste ends up, for example recycling points or landfill sites in any part of the world, the on-site processes a company currently has available to manage its waste and the cost associated with the volume of debris produced.
Once this is in place, a comprehensive and realistic plan can be implemented to improve sustainability and better manage brand integrity.
