Package and Product Integrity Blog

Sustainability is a big issue!  There were seven presentations on designing for sustainability, measuring sustainability, or sustainability initiatives in specific industries. This ‘movement’ seems to be here to stay, although I will contend that the ‘movement’ has been here for a long time, is not new, and for decades has been driven primarily by economic and market forces. For example Laura Nelson of EMC Corporation spoke about sustainable packaging design ideas using suspension packs for circuit card assemblies, air bags, and reusable large cabinet packs.  All of these designs are driven not only by the desire to ‘optimize’ material usage and use less energy, but to reduce costs and increase the bottom line profitability. I believe ‘green’ packaging will continue to be driven predominantly by economic and market forces, independent of the ‘sustainability movement’.

Industry groups are jumping on the sustainability bandwagon as well as Brian O’Banion of the Fibre Box Association presented results for the first ever industry wide life cycle assessment of an average corrugated box. The goals of the study were:

1.)   Better understand the environmental performance of an average corrugated product related to all life cycle stages

2.)   Benchmark and demonstrate the environmental sustainability performance of corrugated products as packaging materials, and

3.)   Respond to customer and public demands for environmental information. (Corrugated Packaging Life-Cycle Assessment Summary Report)

Over the long term, there are no incentives for businesses to use more packaging materials than is required to get the product to the consumer.  It has always made good business sense to discover the most economical and practical way to package your product. Environmental stewardship, in all business endeavors, is the right goal.  For packaging professionals, designing the optimal package has always been the objective.   Perhaps the rapid industrial growth of countries such as India and China has heightened the awareness of the environmental impact of industrialization.  Environmental activism is a logical response to global industrialization and external pressure (the ‘green movement’) is being applied to businesses to make sustainability a significant parameter, in designing packaging.  So we have the Wal-Mart scorecard and other programs by other retailers to force suppliers to use more ‘sustainable’ packaging. This is all well and good but how do you know when you are designing sustainable packaging; and how can this be evaluated equitably in the marketplace? Where are the standards against which packaging can be measured and examined to determine how well you are meeting a goal of “sustainable” packaging.  Is sustainable packaging a continuum or a finite achievement?   I think it is generally accepted that packaging sustainability is a process of continuous and incremental improvements, primarily driven by new technologies and new applications and of course, increasing global competition resulting in positive economic outcomes.

The pursuit of continuous improvement for package sustainability does not preclude the development of standards, goals and “scorecards” however; it presents a challenge to the development of global standardization.  Can metrics, criteria and goals be developed in order to provide some equitable measure of packaging sustainability?  It will not exactly be ‘sustainable packaging’ if each supplier has to comply with a different ‘scorecard’ for each retailer they want to sell to; so global standardization appears essential.

How do we do it?

The new ISO Committee; TC122/SC4 on ‘Packaging and environment’ is attempting to harmonize standards from industrialized countries around the world.  The outcome will eventually be a set of international standards on packaging optimization, reuse, material recycling, energy recycling, chemical recovery, and organic recovery.  The challenge to the Committee will be to write these standards so that they do not become prescriptive which could result in protectionism and a barrier to trade.

There is already some work going on to develop life cycle metrics as Minal Mistry of GreenBlue described in his presentation on “Sustainability and Packaging Design Assessment”.  GreenBlue, a division of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (www.sustainablepackaging.org ), has a developed an online comparative packaging assessment software called COMPASS with the primary purpose to explore sustainability assessments during packaging design stages to make informed decisions about material and process selection. The guidelines will comprise a core set of performance indicators and metrics to help members of a packaging supply chain track and gauge their performance against key elements of the SPC “Definition of Sustainable Packaging”.

Experts in all phases of packaging can have a direct hand in developing the future standards that will foster environmental stewardship as we continue to conduct the commerce essential to a prosperous global economy, and also provide the level playing field that is necessary for that prosperity.