Increasing the Lifespan of Reusable Packaging
Drew Merrill
The use of reusable packaging across a variety of industries is regularly increasing. This is great news! So how do we maximize the lifespan of these containers to ensure we’re using the fewest natural resources possible?
Of course making sure we track and manage our fleets so containers don’t get lost in the supply chain is key. However, a less frequently visited option is container repair.
A multitude of plastic reusable containers can be easily and effectively repaired, and quickly put back into our supply chains. Additionally, years of using repaired containers for industrial and food applications has proven repaired containers to be reliable!
Everyday maintenance like cleaning and inspection after use, in addition to repair and tracking, will significantly increase the life of your packaging and reduce the pace at which we use our environmental resources.
Have suggestions for other ways of increasing the life of containers? I’d love to hear them!
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Designed for Efficiency
Dean Bellefleur
Hey, I’m on board when it comes to 2-way secondary packaging. I would suspect that consumers are as well, is there anyone that doesn’t know what a shipping palette or a milk crate is? The war on plastic bags has proven that consumers are willing to tote their own shopping bags. So the mindset is prevalent -- let's design a practical solution.
But why worry about repairing 2-way packaging? Design and manufacture the packaging to be tossed back into a closed loop system with the least amount of interference. Secondary packaging should become mandatory for industry and heavily encouraged for the general population. Lots of ideas jump to mind.
Why Repair? Because reuse preferable to recycling
dubjbl
I agree that reusable packaging should be recycled and remanufactured into a new container/package when it is no longer usable, but I do not think that means we should not worry about repair. Repairing a slightly damaged package will often be less energy and resource intensive than remanufacturing/recycling. This is a key reason why reuse is above recycling on the resource hierarchy.
Each situation will be different and needs may dictate that damaged packaging be recycled/remanufactured, but let's keep repair/reuse on the table for those situations where it makes sense.
Keep the Solution Simple
Dean Bellefleur
We are talking about 2-way packaging and not automobiles or other big ticket items are we not dubjbl?
An engineer’s tendency is to always over engineer a product; let’s not fall into that trap. I was going to suggest that we design to facilitate disassembly of components but then the cost of labor would negate any advantage. Therefore I throw my support in for total recycling once there is sign of product deterioration, think monoblock production. There is the liability issue to consider as well if a repair was not adequately executed. Let’s keep the solution simple and spend the resources upfront to design to what people will be comfortable with.
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