Cascades Sonoco, a joint venture between Cascades Inc. and Sonoco Products Company, today announced that its FlexSHIELD® coatings have received third party certification for compostability from TÜV Austria. Additionally, the coatings have achieved recyclability and repulpability certifications from the Fiber Box Association. FlexSHIELD’s aqueous-based barrier coatings are designed for use in folding carton, cup, and foodservice container applications, where scoring, folding and heat sealing often create major challenges. FlexSHIELD is the first fully compostable product that provides polyethylene-like protection and ease of conversion at an economical price point. Packaging treated with FlexSHIELD is FDA, CFIA and EUR compliant for direct food contact. “We are pleased that our entire FlexSHIELD coating line has now achieved these important certifications,” said Jeff Stacy, Market Segment Manager, Cascades Sonoco. “These certifications demonstrate our commitment to creating more sustainable packaging solutions for our customers and are the fruit of years of research and development efforts.”

PEFC works to protect, responsibly manage, and further enhance forests, which are probably the most well-known nature-based solution for climate change. Our objective is to increase forests’ capacity to address societal challenges, such as climate change, effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously promoting the use of sustainably sourced wood products, which can help us to substantially accelerate the transition to low-carbon economies. “Sustainable forest management can maintain or enhance forest carbon stocks, and can maintain forest carbon sinks, including by transferring carbon to wood products […]. Where wood carbon is transferred to harvested wood products, these can store carbon over the long-term and can substitute for emissions-intensive materials reducing emissions in other sectors”, highlights the IPCC “with high confidence”.

Paper recycling is one of the most successful recycling systems in America. In 2024 alone, we recycled around 46 million tons of paper in the U.S. That’s 125,000 tons every day being turned into things like cardboard boxes, paper packaging and toilet paper.  That translates to a paper recycling rate of 60%-64% and a cardboard recycling rate of 69%-74%. Today, the paper industry recycles nearly 60% more paper than it did 35 years ago. Today, more than 2/3 of all paper recycled in the U.S. is turned into new products Americans rely on at mills nationwide. Nearly half of recycled paper, about 20.8 million tons, went into making containerboard in 2024. That’s the material used to make cardboard boxes. About 27% of recycled paper was exported. Paper mills around the world rely on our recycled paper exports to manufacture new products. The rest was used in the U.S. to make packaging for cereal or medicine, tissue products like toilet paper and paper towels, as well as printing papers.