Here is an excerpt from an article that I wrote recently for PMP News, outlining some of the challenges that many companies in the medical industry face when redesigning packaging to meet sustainability goals, by reducing or minimizing the materials used in their packaging. Visit PMPNews.com if you would like to read the full article on Packaging Sustainability for the Life Sciences Industry.
Sustainability has become mainstream, and European standards may influence the development of global standards. But there could be some unintended consequences to sustainability that medical device manufacturers should be wary of when redesigning packaging.
For packaging professionals, designing the optimal package has always been the objective. For years the packaging industry has been obligated to provide “sustainable” packaging through state and local legislation (Green Laws, Packaging Waste Directives, ‘Reduce/Reuse/Recycle initiatives); economics (increased margins on products and lower product costs to the consumer); reduced damage claims (engineering, design, testing); and new technologies. Packaging engineers have been designing packaging with these criteria in mind since the first packaging engineer graduated from Michigan State University. The first Earth Day heightened the challenge for packaging engineers. More recently, the rapid industrial growth of countries such as India and China has heightened the awareness of the environmental impact of industrialization.
And so, for many corporations, sustainability is one of their goals. Designing sustainable packaging and minimizing packaging’s impact on the environment fall into that scope. They view (packaging) sustainability as just as important as what is produced, how it is produced, and where it is delivered. These initiatives are spreading among corporations, organizations, regulatory bodies, and governments.
However, in the medical industry, there are many challenges to implementing truly sustainable packaging initiatives. Considerations include the regulatory requirements; preserving the efficacy of the product at end use; ensuring material compatibility with manufacturing processes, sterilization processes, and transportation; and guaranteeing that package designs do not cause unintended consequences within the sustainability continuum that impacts economic, environmental, or social responsibilities.
What is Sustainability?
One of the major dilemmas facing the industry is determining just what sustainability means. “Sustainable development” is a term that grew out of the conservation/environmental movement of the 1970s. While the conservation/environmental movement asked questions about preserving the Earth’s resources, sustainable development includes questions about how human decisions affect the Earth’s environment.
Sustainable development is a process of developing (land, cities, business, communities, etc.) that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” according to the Brundtland Report, a 1987 report from the United Nations. The precise meaning of sustainable development has been widely debated. For example, two years after the Brundtland Commission’s term, more than 140 definitions of sustainable development had been catalogued,” according to ENO Online.
There have been many more definitions for sustainability cataloged since then. The table below illustrates how three other organizations define sustainability.
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Mark Francis
Pat Nolan
