Packaging for the planet

Everything in our society is packaged. With the huge increase in global consumer goods consumption comes a large increase in packaging waste. This has created stress in community landfills around the globe making it more incumbent on companies to use biodegradable as well as recycled materials as much as possible. Sustainable packaging should be embraced, not only for marketing leverage, but because it's the right thing to do.

It's great to see that many companies are behaving like responsible corporate citizens when it comes to sustainable packaging. Much has been made of this topic in professional journals. While important to the discussion, much of this is too scientific to be easily grasped by most of us. So what is sustainable packaging all about?

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition cites that according to conservative estimates the worldwide packaging industry is valued at close to $420-billion and gives employment to more than five million people globally. In the US alone, consumer purchases of durable and non-durable goods and services account for 70% of the GDP. That makes product packaging a big deal!

With a finite amount of nonrenewable natural resources, ever-rising energy costs, and rapidly filling landfills, sustainable packaging is becoming an increasing necessity.

Many CPG companies and retailers are embracing eco-friendly packaging as never before. Wal-Mart, for example, has instituted a Sustainable Packaging Scorecard. The retail giant expects its 60,000 suppliers to fill in substantial information concerning their packaging. This information is shared so that suppliers can see how they "stack up" against all of Wal-Mart's other suppliers.

Employing what Wal-Mart refers to as "The 7 Rs of Packaging - remove, reduce, recycle, renew, revenue, and read" - the company feels it is moving in the right direction with its supplier partners.

This kind of initiative has an understandably large ripple effect throughout the CPG industry. It also provides a catalyst that spurs many companies to take action. Understandably, sustainable packaging is new to many companies and it isn't possible or reasonable to do all of these things at once, if ever. Yet, whatever measures companies can implement will have a direct impact on our environment.

The point is to have a "win-win" proposition: save on energy, natural resources, and environmental waste, while doing it profitably. With some smart thinking and planning, these measures can have a positive impact on corporate revenue streams.

For many decades, products and packaging have both been designed in a "cradle to grave" system; that is, they have ended up in landfills at the end of their useful life cycles. While some product components and packaging have been made biodegradable, a substantial amount is not. The best scenario avoids damaging the ecosystem altogether.

Numerous organisations have been formed to assist companies in reorienting their product and packaging development into a new "cradle to cradle" system. Products and packaging created in this manner feature materials that are perpetually circulated and reused in what industry experts refer to as "closed loops." This extracts maximum value from materials already in use without ever ending up in landfills, damaging ecosystems.

There are various aspects that make packaging sustainable. Manufacturers can institute some, if not all, of these environmentally friendly packaging solutions for their products:

•·        Cut down on excess product packaging. By creating packaging that is the right size for products, and not adding any extraneous material inside of packaging, there are huge savings in costs and waste.

•·        Use materials from renewable resources sourced from well-managed eco-systems. There are alternative resources for environmentally safe packaging components and packing materials.

•·        Use recycled materials to reduce the environmental impact of virgin materials that must be manufactured (the latter uses additional energy and natural resources). Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, and FedEx all use 100% recycled paperboard. Companies can get information at The 100% Recycled Paperboard Alliance.

•·        Use non-toxic lead-free plastic packaging. Cargill Dow's NatureWorks PLA plastic packaging made entirely from field corn and NatureFlex biodegradable and compostable film made from wood pulp, supplied by Surface Specialties UCB.

•·        Use biodegradable materials and soy or water-based inks that will not do damage to the environment.

•·        Purchase packaging materials that have been made with as little energy consumption as possible and that have emitted the fewest greenhouse gases in manufacture.

•·        Use packaging that has shifted away from petro-based chemicals to corn and potato starch components in biodegradable resins. These starches actually compost when degraded. Starch-based biodegradable foams are available from KTM Industries.

•·        Use biodegradable cornstarch peanuts as packing material in cartons rather than foam peanuts or packing pellets made from starch-based cereal grains made from Clextral.

•·        Find out about cradle-to-cradle product and packaging components and use them whenever possible.

Added to packaging issues are myriad supply chain issues. Getting packaged products to the retail marketplace is a huge area of focus at present. According to an August 2006 report in the ProLogis Supply Chain Review, more logistics experts are working to maximize cube utilization better than ever before, given transportation costs. Better cube utilization simply means that manufacturers and retailers are seeking more efficiencies in trucking their products to consumer channels. By optimizing carton to pallet space ratios and filling trucks to capacity, transportation and energy costs are cut down.

Many companies are also teaming with other companies as "partners" in trucking, ensuring that once trucks unload their cargo, they pick up additional cargo and make additional drops on the way back so that they aren't returning empty, consuming additional energy. Smart thinking by smart logistics managers.

By consciously choosing products that are packaged in recycled or renewable materials, consumers not only support the companies that are eco-conscious, but also do their part to lessen energy use, the stripping of our precious natural resources and environmental waste.

Companies seeking guidance and additional information on sustainable packaging can go to the Sustainable Packaging Coalition Web site http://www.sustainablepackaging.org/ or The Sustainable Packaging Alliance http://www.sustainablepack.org/.