Danger Danger ... Misuse of Reuse!
- Filed in:
- Bags & pouches,
- Greenwashing
sean sabre
Hello all
I wanted to share a concern. I think from a semantics standpoint we have spent a lot of time within the sustainable packaging movement drilling into recyclability, source reduction, compostability, biodegradation, etc but have left reuse out there as a "given". Everyone knows what reuse means ... we don't need to discuss THAT!
Well, I gotta tell you. Reuse means different things to different people. Recently I served as a member of the US Delegation to Beijing for ISO TC 122/SC4 (standards development for environmental packaging). In one of the sessions we were working on the standards development for reuse.
We discussed in brutal detail what "trips" meant in Europe vs Asia vs the Americas, drafted a slew of different flow diagrams to outline what a pallet exchange program looks like, or how a steel drum might get refurbished, etc etc.
A couple hours into this I asked the group "how are we going to offer credit to someone for packaging that has a second life after its primary use in this standard?". After a lively discussion, the committee agreed it was too difficult and we would define reuse as trips within the parameters of primary use only and we would table this "other reuse" and define it as "secondary use" for a future standard to be developed someday maybe post TC 122/SC4.
So, when someone speaks about reuse in terms of a tin gift box, a glass container, a stool integrated into a point of purchase display or any other design as such they won't be able to get check marks for reuse ... unless that tin box is refilled with the same tray of cookies, that glass jar is re-filled with that same jam or that stool is propping up a tier of product in a re-filled display.
So, where does that leave people who have designed that glass container to be a beautiful vase post use, or that beautifully decorated tin box to store your misc items on your kitchen counter or that stool that someone can take home as part of that display? In third world countries glass and metal containers have 2nd, 3rd, 4th and many more lives as packaging previously used for carrying product x now stores their savings, their food or clean potable water.
As a designer, why would you design for "secondary use" if no credit will be given? If it isn't practical to send a re-fill pouch to someone to dump into their jelly jars does that mean they shouldn't be called reusable?
Well well well ... and you thought reuse was a simple term that everyone understood and agreed upon.
I'm curious how everyone feels about this? What should we do now?
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RE: Danger Danger ... Misuse of Reuse!
DavidPadula
Great points and as you noted unless there is a way to track the uses like with a pallet or re-usable shipper carton it seems like the only Eco-Category that is very hard to define.
Reusing instead of making from scratch can have large benefits... but how can you quantify them?
If a tree falls in the forest....?
Danger Danger ... Misuse of Reuse
sean sabre
Hello David
A methodology to quantify the validity of a reuse claim (insinuating a secondary use) is indeed difficult. Is a jam jar reusable but a mayonnaise or mustard jar not? What about a candle in a jar ... is the jar part of the product or will the packager now claim it as a reusable container?
What about cigar box or a knit bag enveloping a laptop?
The concern voiced within our ISO session stemmed from this argument. How will we be able to stem the tide of claims of reuse that we cannot "invalidate"?
This is a problem and so far a lot of the thought leaders I have spoken with in our field do not have a solution framwork in development.
I'm hoping that we may achieve a breakthrough here in this discussion.
To those of you out there reading this with an idea ... post it. We need dialogue on this subject.
Thanx for your post David
Reusable packaging definition
Julian Carroll...Dear Sean, Dear All,
I share your frustration with this question which ISO TC122/SC4 is wrestling with. We had the same problem in Europe when the European (CEN) Standards were under development.
In the 1994 EU Directive the definition of reuse is:
(art.3.5) ‘reuse’ shall mean any operation by which packaging, which has been conceived and designed to accomplish within its life cycle a minimum number of trips or rotations, is refilled or used for the same purpose for which it was conceived, with or without the support of auxiliary products present on the market enabling the packaging to be refilled; such reused packaging will become packaging waste when no longer subject to reuse;
The same Directive (in annex II) says:
2. Requirements specific to the reusable nature of packaging
The following requirements must be simultaneously satisfied:
- the physical properties and characteristics of the packaging shall enable a number of trips or rotations in normally predictable conditions of use,
- possibility of processing the used packaging in order to meet health and safety requirements for the workforce,
- fulfil the requirements specific to recoverable packaging when the packaging is no longer reused and thus becomes waste.
There is a Guide on how the CEN Standard on Reuse(EN13429) works available at (http://tinyurl.com/38v8xw8)
One important learning in Europe was that all attempts to establish a quantifiable methodology for number of reuse trips failed so save yourselves the frustration of attempting that. It cannot be done with any certainty.
reuse
sean sabre
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Hello Julian
I agree that within the context of trips and rotations we will probably not get far with secondary use definitions.
Perhaps we stray beyond the semantics that have driven the reuse definition to date and use a bit of creativity to come up with a new quantifiable term set.
The question is ... how can you validate the claim or for that matter invalidate the claim of secondary use?
In the steel drum, pallet or even refillable laundry detergent scenarios it's relatively easy to validate the trips and rotations.
But, how can you validate that a knit bag enveloping a laptop will truly be used vs landfilled? Should there be a % threshold... meaning what % of customers will truly use that knit bag. If <50% use it will the claim be nullified? How do we determine the afterlife scenario we assume will take place actualy does?
With recycling we can look to industry data to deduce what happens post consumer but with secondary life of metal containers, glass containers or the knit bag there is no data to deduce what happened post consumption of the primary product. We will never know if it was used or thrown away ... unless we polled every customer that purchased the packaging.
So, do we give up? Is there a way to incentivize secondary use packaging? If not, we will have to stop granting credit in these scenarios and a lot of firms have won sustainable packaging awards based on secondary use. Should we strip them of their credit?
I think instinctively the answer is clear to everyone ... designing for secondary use is a good thing.
So, what's next? The fact that it is challenging should not trump our ability to come up with a viable solution
Misuse of Reuse
Bob Sanders...I think it would help if the hurdle to be called reusable wasn't so steep (EU = 5 turns?), since it may encourage more work towards that. For instance, a pack that is reused once still achieves 50% source reduction compared to making a new one. Don't let the good be the enemy of the great. Packs that can survive several primary reuses AND serve a secondary purpose should earn even more points. For instance, those old plastic milk crates from the 1970's which are still housing things in my garage!!
The same challenges could be applied to virtually all of the so called green outcomes... For instance, can corrugated fibreboard be considered "compostable or biodegradable" simply because it's made from paper even if it very rarely if ever enters into an industrial composting process? Much of this depends too heavily on the actions of the receiver (especially on globally distributed products) which are usually outside the control of the brand owner.
Good topic...
reuse
sean sabre
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Hello Bob
Thank you for contributing. Excellent points.
Post consumer disposition is exactly where this conversation takes shape. Milk jugs are recycled heavily ... but how many people give them a second life by washing them out and refilling with cool aid, water or gasoline?
We spend a considerable amount of time in the sustainable packaging movement drilling into brutal detail for topics such as compostability just to find that (to your point in your post) the conditions for compostability post consumer aren't being met.
And yet secondary use is being brushed aside as something that we categorize as "too difficult to address" and "not worthy of discussion".
I think we'll see if we can change that mindset. We need a fresh topic to deep dive and I think this is as good as any.
Thanx again Bob ... good post
Time taken before the packaging is seen in the waste stream
Espresso
Packaging that is truly used for secondary uses will take a long time after selling before they appear in the waste stream. I don't know how practical it would be, but an agency could survey waste streams to assess this.
reuse
sean sabre
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Hello Expresso
Thank you for chiming in.
I'm not sure how viable it would be for an agency to survey the waste stream to ascertain how many lives a polyester bottle had post primary use. Maybe there is indeed a way but I can't imagine a methodology that is scalable to achieve a statistically significant set of data points without being very expensive.
I think the answer lies somewhere in between consumer feedback and an industry standard for acceptable scenarios.
Here's a thought. To revert back to polyester bottles, a flagship application of recyclability, it is commonly understood (and reflected in EPA stats) that the rate of recovery is <30% despite the fact that 80% of the population has access to curbside/drop-off programs. But, no one would ever challenge the poster child of PET bottles as recyclable.
If we could find one secondary life application which achieves a 25% occurrence post primary use could we not agree as an industry that a categorization is rational? Or, is our comfort level relegated to the confines of resins and fiber packaging recovery and where we wish the statistics could be if consumers exhibited a desired behavior.
Personally, I would feel better if we had more discourse on the subject and perhaps saw a few examples where the GHG impact were quantified in a resuse scenario vs a recycling scenario and we all opened our eyes to a practice that should be as equally encouraged as dropping a product into a different color bin.
Measuring Reuse
Jerry Welcome...Sean,
Great discussion. I think you will always have difficulty in trying to measure the impact of reuse from primary or secondary packaging. It is somewhat easier to measure the impact of returnable bottles and cans, but quite another story to try and measure the environmental impact of using other packaging such as coffee cans or plastic bottles to hold other products. I think the EU has it about right. Without a methodology to measure the impact of a given container it will be nearly impossible to come up with a metric to put it into a scorecard that is believable. The Reusable Packaging Association (RPA) is working with Wal-Mart and others to come up with acceptable metrics to score the impact of reusable transport packaging in their supply chain, and I can tell you it is a very complex and difficult issue. Measuring the impact of transportation packaging is difficult enough, trying to come up with a measure for all other packaging would, in my opinion, be extremely difficult.
Reuse
sean sabre
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Hello Jerry
Welcome to the dialogue.
I am in complete agreement that this is a "very difficult and complex issue". That was pretty much the intent of my post ... to convey to our sustainable packaging brethren that we indeed require more discussion on reuse.
But, compostability is a complex issue as well. Yet, there is a tremendous amount of formal dialogue ... too much if you ask me. It's either backyard compostable (which by the way ISO won't even touch in developing a standard) or industrially compostable (which the infrastructure is weak to say the least) but we talk about it to death.
Or degradables ... there's a complex subject. Anyone that can read a technical paper on the science behind additive based oxo/photo degradables and not fall asleep in 5 minuts gets my full respect. But again, talked to death.
My issue is not that the reuse issue is easy ... it is as you stated "extremely difficult". My issue is that there isn't enough dialogue.
I appreciate you bringing the RPA front to the table. But, unfortunately, the dialogue they are having with Wal-Mart is more centered around industrial pallet and bin pools, etc.
What I'd like to discuss is post consumer (non-industrial) secondary life for packaging. I prefer secondary LIFE vs secondary USE as not to be confused with ISO/EU reuse language.
And, how difficult is it really to quantify the impact of a glass container that becomes a vase? You can establish the impact of buying a new vase ... and there's your mitigation. I know this is a gross oversimplification but the methodology isn't too "science fiction".
We just need solid examples as a baseline to stop everyone from squirming in their chairs and get used to the idea that we can find an acceptable way to do this.
At the end of the day, we owe it to the planet to give a secondary life to everything we can BEFORE we chuck it.
Thanx for your post!
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