Package and Product Integrity Blog

Patrick Nolan, DDL President, will be presenting on the topic of sustainable packaging during this year’s FMA Progressive Packaging and Sustainability Congress Conference.

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. Take the Wal-Mart scorecard, for example, and other programs that are forcing suppliers to use more ‘sustainable’ packaging. This is all well and good but through the ‘sustainable’ packaging process, a few questions arise;

• How do you know when you are designing sustainable packaging?

• 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?

Nolan’s presentation will cover a general overview of sustainability, the concepts of cradle to grave and cradle to cradle as well as the unintended consequences that can arise during the source reduction process of responsible packaging.

Nolan will also touch on what the industry bodies, such as ASTM, Sustainable Packaging Coalition and European Bioplastics are doing.

The Progressive Packaging and Sustainability is put on in partnership with the FMA Congresses.

The FMA Progressive Packaging Sustainability Congress will take place on November 9-11, 2011 in Chicago, IL.

To learn more about how DDL can help you with your sustainable packaging initiatives and responsible package design, visit our website or contact us to see how we can help.

DDL President, Patrick Nolan will be representing us at this year’s Packaging Strategies’ Sustainable Packaging Forum, September 20-22 in Dallas, Texas.

DDL’s newly developed Responsible Packaging Development Group, led by Mr. Nolan is attending this year’s Sustainable Packaging Forum to meet with executives and people within companies that are implementing sustainable packaging initiatives in their organization.

A number of companies understand the importance of designing sustainable packaging; however, many fail to consider the potential unintended consequences that could arise if the package is not tested to ensure the environment it is exposed to is allowing the new package design to effectively protect the product. Our experience with distribution simulation testing will help ensure that you’re new sustainable package is still protecting the product as originally intended.

We look forward to seeing anyone that may be attending this year’s show. If you want to learn more about the Sustainable Packaging Forum and register to attend, click below for further details about the forum and to register.

DDL recently announced the expansion of their testing capabilities with the addition of sustainable package testing and their newly formed Responsible Packaging Development Group.

“We can all see that the industry is shifting to towards a ‘responsible’ packaging trend,” DDL President, Patrick Nolan, said.  “DDL is responding to this shift with the addition of our Responsible Packaging Development Group designed to assist companies in the steps that need to be taken in achieving your desired level of sustainability.”

DDL, known in the industry for their expertise in medical device package testing, has been conducting distribution simulation testing on packages for more than 20 years.  DDL’s tenured engineers have a strong understanding of the distribution environment and the conditions that a package goes through during the transportation process.

“A number of companies understand the importance of designing sustainable packaging; however, many fail to consider the potential unintended consequences that could arise if the package is not tested to ensure the environment it is exposed to is allowing the new package design to effectively protect the product,” Nolan said.  “Our experience with distribution simulation testing will help ensure that you’re new sustainable package is still protecting your product as originally intended.”

DDL’s Responsible Packaging Development Group can assist companies in the following ways;

• Compliance to ISO packaging and environmental standard
• Initial Package Design with optimization in mind
• Material selection for optimal source reduction
• Package design testing for evaluation of optimization of material strength and performance
• Package design testing for confirmation of effective cost reduction
• Reduce unintended consequence of source reduction

What recent changes have you seen companies make in regards to designing responsible packaging in line with their sustainability initiatives?

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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Cryopak’s TimeSaver72™ pre-qualified shipper was submitted for a Greener Package Award because all of the materials used are fully recyclable. The TimeSaver72 offers clients an option to select the design & service features to create the smallest, lightest, and most cost efficient approach to match their shipping lane requirements.

“The TimeSaver72™ consists of an outer box, insulating material, and refrigerants,” Anthony Alleva, Technical Services Manager at Cryopak, explains. “Each component has a set of options offering the ability for client’s to specify their requirements based on environmental conditions, cost value and their company’s preference on green initiatives while also keeping the requirements of the specific application.”

The EPS insulating material specified uses recycled pharmaceutical grade material ranging from 0 percent to 20 percent regrind content with no degradation of performance. Engineered Phase 5™ phase change material is used as the core refrigerant because it reduces the overall size and weight of the package while also increasing the range of performance time. The conditioning methods reduce energy requirements because of the fact that the PCM doesn’t need to be pre-conditioned in a refrigerator or freezer, therefore, reducing the energy requirements to prepare the package.

The second-annual Greener Package Awards competition recognizes innovations in five categories that significantly reduce packaging’s environmental footprint. The categories included; Food & Pharmaceutical Packaging, Personal Care/Cosmetics Packaging, Non-Food Primary Packaging, Secondary/Large-Format Packaging, Beyond the Package Award. An award was also given out for the Innovator of the Year.

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Due to the global movement with sustainable initiatives and in an effort to “go green”, many global corporations are looking to implement new package designs be material source reduction, while still maintaining regulatory compliance. There are many important factors for these companies to consider in order to achieve their sustainability goals, which is why I will be attending next week’s  Sustainable Packaging Forum & Expo in Phoenix, Arizona.

Packaging Strategies’ 6th Annual Sustainable Packaging Forum will focus on the latest sustainable packaging practices, business strategies and technologies from across the globe that support company growth while meeting today’s sustainability challenges.

One of our reasons for being at the show next week is to speak with companies and individuals that are looking to implement changes to packaging using optimization by source reduction. One of our goals is to provide resources to industries that want to produce sustainable packaging and help them ensure they don’t run into unintended consequences from initial package design, material selection for optimal source reduction and qualification or compliance issues. If you are at the show next week in Phoenix, make sure to stop by DDL’s booth at the expo to say hi to Pat and learn more about what we are doing to help companies design, test and implement sustainable packaging initiatives.

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)

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