Regulators keep rewriting the rules on recyclability and extended producer responsibility. Retailers are setting recycled-content targets and expecting suppliers to meet them. Raw materials, from paperboard to resin to aluminum, can move in price with little warning.
For years, many procurement teams treated sustainability as a separate track, something owned by corporate responsibility teams while sourcing focused on the lowest unit cost. That split no longer works.
A recyclable design that costs more to produce, a mono-material switch that affects multiple supplier contracts or a carbon goal that changes where a package is made are all buying decisions with real financial consequences.
Bhavuk Chawla has spent much of his career on the buying side of that challenge. A Forbes Business Council member with more than 16 years of experience across packaging development, contract manufacturing and sourcing in fast-moving consumer goods, Chawla has worked on paper and board contracts, aerosol supply networks and recyclable packaging formats while managing cost pressures.
His book, Advanced Procurement for Sustainable Packaging: Driving Cost, Circularity, and Value Chain Innovation, is an effort to turn those sourcing decisions into a practical method for other procurement and packaging leaders.
The book reads less like a sustainability manifesto than a practical sourcing guide.
Its 326 pages cover lifecycle costing, carbon economics, digital traceability, AI-assisted sourcing, regulatory pressure and the design of circular packaging systems.
Where cost and circularity stop competing
The book’s central claim is that the trade-off many executives assume, that a company can hit either its cost target or its sustainability target but rarely both, is often a symptom of how the decision gets made.
When recyclability, material choice, carbon and price are weighed in separate rooms by separate teams, they can pull against one another. Chawla argues procurement is positioned to weigh those factors together because it is where the specification, supplier, volume and cost all meet.
A mono-material package can reduce layers of complexity and simplify qualification. Lightweighting can cut freight costs and emissions. Localizing a recyclable format can reduce lead time and the carbon impact tied to transportation.
Sustainability as an operating model
A recurring theme in the book is the gap between public commitments and daily purchasing decisions.
Many companies have announced recycled-content goals and circularity pledges. Fewer have fully built those goals into supplier scorecards, costing models and approval workflows.
Chawla’s recommended fix is practical: put carbon, recyclability and material choice into the same lifecycle cost models that already drive sourcing. That way, a buyer can see the full picture at the moment of choice rather than after the fact in a year-end disclosure.
The technology chapters treat AI and digital traceability as working tools rather than buzzwords. Chawla discusses forecasting demand so material is not over-ordered, tracing recycled content through a supply chain so claims can be verified and flagging price or supply risk early enough for procurement teams to respond.
Lessons from the field
In one paper and board negotiation, Chawla connected a multiyear packaging program to Forest Stewardship Council-certified material and built inflation-sharing terms that split rising paper costs with the supplier. The result was a deal structured to protect both margin and the sustainability commitment.
Other examples point in the same direction. In work involving a North American aerosol network, Chawla helped move production toward a more sustainable propellant in support of climate goals. In another redesign, a polyethylene-free carton supported a more recyclable package while also reducing cost.
His view of the broader field also comes from industry evaluation work. As a judge for the Institute of Packaging Professionals, Chawla reviews packaging innovation from across the sector, which gives the book a stronger sense of what is working in practice and what is still mostly marketing.
Where it goes from here
The timing works in the book’s favor.
Extended producer responsibility rules are expanding, recycled-content mandates are reaching more categories and material markets remain unpredictable. Most consumer goods companies already know they need to change how they package. Fewer have a method for doing it that finance teams will support.
That gap is the space the book tries to fill.
Chawla does not suggest circular packaging is easy or free. His argument is narrower and more useful: the choice between responsible packaging and affordable packaging is often less fixed than companies assume, and procurement is where the two can be reconciled.
If that view proves right, the teams that treat sustainable packaging as a sourcing capability rather than a reporting obligation may be better positioned to protect both their margins and their commitments.
©2026 Cox Media Group
