Packaging Consultant
kevinmulligan
I work within the medical device field, and pacakge sustainability lags behind other industries. I would like to know more about thoughts associated with the Wallmart scorecard, and any efforts underway within this industry. In addition, I would like to understand the impact on third party review processes to support environmental claims and avoid greenwashing.
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In the field of medical
Alexis
In the field of medical devices safety and efficiency are, by far, more important than “packaging sustainability”. People must evaluate the whole product balance (device + packaging + applicability) rather than speaking about “packaging sustainability”. In this field, packaging environmental claims constituteL greenwashing.
Medical Packaging
Michael Oppenheim...I agree medical packaging does lag behind with its sustainability efforts. But safety and protection always comes first in this area. The scorecard is a great tool to motivate the corporation internally to strive for more green-sustainable solutions. We need to explore new materials and methods. Using a third party consultant may not eliminate green washing but it may help you understand the life cycle analysis of products (including packaging). This helps understand all the impacts energy, materials, transportation...etc. and this may reduce some false claims or big public focus on insignificant improvements.
Medical Packaging
Jill H.
The Walmart Scorecard will tell you how you score within the Walmart system. The Walmart Package Modeling software does allow you to compare packages to understand which package scores better in the Walmart system. However, depending on the packaging material components, the Walmart Scorecard can be inaccurate as to the true sustainability of the package. Particularly when it comes to plastic packaging as there are many materials used in flexible and rigid plastic packaging that are just not material choices in the Scorecard. The reason being, there is not publicly available LCA data on many polymers. However the basic 7R's of Scorecard (Remove Packaging, Reduce Packaging, Reuse Packaging, Use Renewable Packaging, Recycle Packaging, Revenue and Read) are a great framework to creating more sustainable packaging.
The Sustainable Packaging Coalition recently released their "Sustainable Packaging Indicators and Metrics Framework" to help measure progress toward sustainable packaging. This is a great resource. I would suggest you check out their website www.sustainablepackaging.org.
The Greener Package is also a great resource for information and discussion on sustainable packaging.
Third party LCA review processes are a great way to understand the sustainability of your product. Be careful, however, is using the LCA comparatively unless the methodology and inputs were consistent.
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