You’ve done the technical work. You’ve evaluated new materials, tested performance, and confirmed your chosen sustainable packaging solution works.
Now comes the hard part: getting internal buy-in.
Sustainability initiatives often stall right before the finish line. And this isn’t because teams don’t support them, but rather because the change feels like a risk. If a material disrupts production, raises costs, or confuses the customer experience, even a solid solution can get stuck in limbo.
To move forward, your sustainability case needs to work for every stakeholder, from operations and procurement to marketing. Here’s how to make that happen, and how ICPG’s XPP material is designed to support internal sustainability.
Operations: It Needs to Run — Cleanly and Consistently
Operations teams are laser-focused on one thing: keeping lines running smoothly. If a material creates variability, slows throughput, or requires constant adjustment, it’s going to get flagged.
To get buy-in from ops, a new material must:
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Run on existing equipment without significant changes or costly upgrades
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Process within familiar operating windows with minimal setting adjustments
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Avoid new tooling or major line modifications
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Deliver consistent, repeatable packaging performance
Minor adjustments including temperature, dwell time, and forming pressure are expected with any material change — but major overhauls are not. If operators must "babysit" the line, the material becomes a risk.
From a packaging standpoint, ops teams are also thinking downstream. Your packaging materials must perform across the full spectrum, including (but not limited to):
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Dimensional stability
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Seal integrity
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Cosmetic consistency
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Line speed and throughput
Internal sustainability can't come at the cost of downstream performance. Even the most sustainable material cannot serve as a packaging solution if it compromises packaging performance, creating ripple effects across quality, fulfillment, and customer satisfaction.
The strongest internal pitch emphasizes drop-in compatibility and reliable performance, not experimentation, especially when alternatives relying heavily on PCR may introduce processing variability.
Finance & Procurement: Predictability Is the Priority
Finance and procurement evaluate sustainability through the lens of commercial viability. Their role isn’t to debate sustainability goals—it’s to ensure material choices are cost-predictable, scalable, and defensible over time.
The biggest concerns tend to be:
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Reliable sourcing at scale
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Stable pricing over time
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Controlled exposure to resin volatility
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Minimized supplier risk
This is where sustainability initiatives can stall, especially when they rely heavily on high-PCR content.
While PCR is an important part of circularity, it can introduce challenges that procurement teams must consider:
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Inconsistent supply availability, especially at scale
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Price volatility driven by collection rates and regional capacity
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Batch-to-batch variability that complicates qualification and forecasting
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Increased dependency on a limited supplier base
To succeed, internal sustainability must respect procurement’s need for predictability. The best material solutions offer predictable pricing and long-term availability, don’t require constant requalification or renegotiation, and support stable, repeatable purchasing decisions over time.
When sustainability solutions respect how procurement and finance evaluate risk, they become far easier to approve and sustain over the long term.
Giving Marketing a Story That’s Simple and Defensible
Marketing teams are often strong advocates for sustainability, but they’re also the first to raise concerns when it puts the brand at risk.
Their challenge is different from the others: their primary concerns are credibility and consistency.
Beyond environmental claims, marketing teams are responsible for protecting brand image and maintaining customer trust and loyalty, all while keeping the look, feel, and performance that customers expect.
Any material change that alters the customer experience — however small — can undermine years of brand equity.
That’s why marketing teams need confidence that sustainability initiatives won’t change the visual appearance of packaging, affect tactile feel or perceived quality, introduce performance issues that reach the end user, or create inconsistency across SKUs, regions, or production runs.
From a messaging standpoint, they need to know:
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Can this sustainability claim be clearly and simply explained?
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Is it aligned with real-world recyclability?
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Will it stand up to regulatory and customer scrutiny?
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Are we avoiding greenwashing risk?
Overly technical sustainability claims or nuanced claims can undermine consumer trust. Marketing benefits most when sustainability claims are:
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Easy to understand by customers and stakeholders
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Rooted in material design and recyclability, not complicated qualifiers
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Backed by real performance data
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Consistent across regions, SKUs, and markets
When sustainability is built into the material — not layered on through disclaimers — marketing can promote it with confidence.
Why Sustainability Efforts Stall Internally
Most sustainability initiatives don’t stall because of lack of interest or intent. They stall when the internal case creates unbalanced risk across teams:
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Operations fear disruptions
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Procurement fears cost volatility
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Marketing fears brand inconsistency
Even when internal sustainability goals are shared, those tradeoffs make alignment difficult and slow your decision-making.
The fastest path to internal momentum isn’t pushing harder on sustainability targets. It’s removing the friction that makes those targets feel risky in practice.
When a material solution works across processing, procurement, packaging performance, and brand experience, sustainability stops being a negotiation and starts becoming an operationally sound business decision.
How XPP Supports Internal Sustainability at Every Level
This is where XPP Polypropylene changes the internal sustainability conversation.
XPP is not a single fixed formulation — it’s a flexible material platform designed to meet sustainability goals while preserving processing performance, packaging function, and cost control.
XPP offers something for everyone across your teams:
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Sustainability: XPP is designed for recyclability within existing polypropylene recycling streams and can incorporate PCR content as part of a broader circularity strategy without sacrificing performance or scalability.
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Operations & Manufacturing: XPP is engineered to run on existing thermoforming and FFS equipment. While minor setting adjustments may occur, it avoids major tooling or process changes — even with PCR integration.
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Finance & Purchasing: XPP offers a reduced total cost of ownership in comparison to alternative PS and PET solutions helping to protect margins and simplify sourcing decisions.
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Marketing: XPP allows teams to communicate sustainability clearly and credibly. Whether you’re discussing recyclability, reduced material complexity, or PCR incorporation, you can be sure you’re not over-promising or relying on fragile claims that break under scrutiny.
XPP doesn’t force companies to choose between recyclability, PCR content, or operational stability. It enables a balanced approach that internal teams can support with confidence.
The Bottom Line
Selling sustainability internally isn’t about asking teams to compromise or take a leap of faith. It’s about showing them a path that aligns with:
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Current equipment and processes with minimal adjustment
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Customer expectations
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Established procurement and cost structures
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Compliance and credibility
The conversation changes. What starts as a sustainability proposal becomes an execution-ready solution — one that operations can run, procurement can source, marketing can stand behind, and leadership can approve with confidence.
At that point, adoption isn’t driven by pressure or persuasion. It happens because the path forward is clear.
Ready to Align Your Teams on Sustainability?
Don’t let internal friction stall your progress. ICPG’s XPP platform is designed to meet the performance, cost, and brand requirements that make internal sustainability real — not risky.
Let’s talk. Contact us to discuss how XPP can accelerate your packaging goals and unite your stakeholders around a sustainability strategy that works.
