PPB April 2021

by Danielle Renda WATER COOLER Turning The Corner This year, themes in business and tech focus on reassessing end users’ needs, challenges and current expectations in a post-pandemic world. The overarching theme we can expect to see in business and in technology this year is mapping out new territory, according to Fjord Trends 2021; the 14th edition of an annual market research publication produced by Accenture Interactive, a division of worldwide and billion-dollar digital agency network Accenture. The report, which focuses on how people, organizations and brands are meeting human needs, and which notes seven trends overall, states that with the chaos of COVID-19 came an awareness of what matters most. Having spent the duration of 2020 facing disruption in every facet of life, people are now relishing a renewed focus on and longing to help others solve their greatest challenges and prepare for a brighter future; something that has segued continued on page 68 BRANDABLE A Smarter Way To Eat’Sa Pizza A food service distributor and a corrugated packaging company team up on a platform to educate restaurants and end users about pizza box recycling programs. It’s a fact that America is a nation of pizza-lovers. Every year in the U.S., Americans consume a whopping three billion pizzas, according to The Washington Post; that’s equivalent to 46 slices per person, or enough pizzas to cover 100 acres in gooey, cheesy goodness each day. But with three billion pizzas comes a lot of boxes containing grease and cheese residue, and tons of corrugated cardboard, according to the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), begging the question of what’s being done with all those leftover boxes—and that’s where Performance Food Group (PFG) and WestRock saw an opportunity. PRG, a Richmond, Virginia-based food service distributor with more than 100 facilities nationwide, and delivering to more than 200 locations, partnered with WestRock, an Atlanta-based corrugated packaging company that manufactures pizza boxes, to launch Sustainable Choice™, a national pizza box recycling program and online portal designed to debunk the myth that used pizza boxes can’t be recycled. The companies were inspired to create the program following a Westrock study, which was endorsed by members of the AF&PA to dispel confusion on whether grease and cheese residue affects the recyclability of pizza boxes. WestRock concluded that the corrugated pizza boxes—which can be recycled up to seven times, says the AF&PA—can be recycled when there is a moderate level of cheese and grease on them. PRG and WestRock’s portal serves to educate restaurants and the public on how and where they can recycle their pizza boxes, and encourages them to do so. In another WestRock study conducted in 2019, it was found that nearly continued on page 68 AlexLMX / David Franklin / DimaSid / f_y_b / Zoran Vukmanov Simokov / Shutterstock.com | APRIL 2021 | 67 THINK