 | Kevin MulliganUsername: kevin mulligan |
Location
N. Attleboro, Mass, USA
Role
ConsultantIndustry
Medical DeviceJob Title
OwnerCompany
KMCRecent Discussions
EPP Environmentally Preferred Packaging for Healthcare Products
EPP or Environmentally Preferred Packaging is fast becoming a strategic requirments with many major hospital groups. Strategically positioning packaging as environmentally friendly can be a key element to the making the sale or not. How many companies are strategically involved?
Posted April 28, 2010Examples of companies making sustainability progress in the healthcare industries?
Sustainability is beginning to take a foothold in the Healthcare Industry, and will be an integral part of the vendor selection process with Healthcare providers and Distributors. Are there any companies that have made effective in roads in this area, with tangible results and recommendations?
Posted February 24, 2010
Comments
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Thank you; I will review in
Thank you; I will review in more depth. Does P and G intend to use a formal and accepted LCA approach in the strict sense of cradle to cradle or cradle to grave? Can you tell me what the key elements and KPI are to be used? It appears to be carbon footprint based to a large degree; it is focused on savings modules in energy consumption as well. Thank you
I am very interested to learn
I am very interested to learn more on your scorecard. I am working on an application for the Healthcare Industry and was wondering if you think this would apply?
EPP
The white paper is going to be published very shortly, possibly here on this forum. I hope within the next week or two. I agree; there is much work being done on replacement of IV bags with polyolefin strructures for the reasons you point out.
EPP
I would agree that Healthcare has a way to go on EPP. However, virgin trim scrap can and has been used quite extensivly for medical device applications with class 1, 2 and 3 product lines. Pharmaceuticals however are a different story. Recycling of plastic has not taken the foothold expected either. What is happening however is the change in the types of plastics used. PVC and DEHP are under great fire, and many firms are converting to polyolefins due to issues with incineration etc. Reduction in material weight is a big issue and this is being piggybacked on efforts such as Green Dot in Germany and the Duales system. Not perfect, but progress is measurably better in many circles including recycling. I have written a white paper on the subject if you are interested.
LCA
Great insight, and I agree with many of the things you say. However, weight of packaging will likely remain an immediate solution for many, including manufacturers and legislators. In Europe much of th law focuses on weight reduction such as the Duales system in Germany. In addition, companies benefit from source reduction diretly to the bottom line. One of the big challenges still focuses on recycling. With the exception of commodities such as aluminum, paper and paper byproducts, items such as plastics remain challenges ( with the exception of a few homogeneous structures). The cost of reclycing simply does not make sense, and when LCAs are done, it can demonstrate that there are more harmful byproducts produced as part ot the recycling process.
Information on Healthcare sustainability and packaging3
Thanks so much for the help; by the way, I have just written an article and am looking to have it reviewed for publication. Do you know of anyone interested in this?
thank you for the comments; I
thank you for the comments; I do believe however that with Med Device, it may happen a bit quicker, particularly on secondary and tertiary packaging.