 | Sean Sabre |
Location
Raleigh, NC, US
Role
Supply Chain ManagementJob Title
Director, Supply Chain Planning AmericasCompany
ModusLink Global SolutionsRecent Blog Entries
Recovery Series - Topic 4: How do we quantify waste stream diversion and more importantly ... should we?
Hello All What % of landfills in the US are capping and collecting methane? What is the methane emission signature of landfill refuse by category (plastics packaging, paper based packaging, etc)? What % of waste to energy facilities in the US are capping their emissions? What is the emission signature of incineration fuel by category (plastics packaging, paper based packaging, etc)? Regardless of whether packaging waste is land filled, incinerated or sold to a recycler, does the collection and sorting process not have it’s own GHG signature?
Posted January 17, 2011
Recent Discussions
Danger Danger ... Misuse of Reuse!
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!
Posted July 21, 2010Sustainable Packaging in Supply Chain Context
Hello all For those of you who know me (and this group travels in tight circles) I'm not shy by no means and like a bit of controversy. Maybe shake things up a bit and challenge the readership. Maybe this is the first post along these lines, but shame on us in the sustainable packaging realm that we don't talk enough about sustainable packaging design and supply chain dynamics.
Posted October 22, 2009What does photovoltaic investment tax credits have to do with greener packaging?
Hello All So, what do photovoltaic investment tax credits have to do with greener packaging? Well, quite a bit. If you have been using the Wal-Mart scorecard you will have noticed that ever since the beta there has been a question regarding the use of renewable energy. While everyone has placed a considerable emphasis on biopolymers, recycled content and recovery (very important topics) I haven't seen a lot of dialogue on renewable energy.
Posted April 30, 2009Recovery Series - Topic 3: Sustainable Forestry Credit Scheme
Hello All Me again ... I am sure I'm making no new friends in the paperboard and thermoforming industries with my previous two discussion topics. Why not ask a hard question about forestry certification? Here is my question.
Posted March 19, 2009Recovery Series - Topic 2: Universal PET Recyclability Myth
Hello All I have found it rather distressing over the past couple years to find a good number of people within the sustainability movement that are perpetuating a myth. Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) while commonly used to manufacture liquid containers (water bottles, etc) is also commonly used as an alternate to PVC for manufacturing thermoformed clamshells, blisters, structural packaging and trays, is extruded in sheet to manufacture folding cartons and rigid packaging and is injection molded for media cases, etc.
Posted March 19, 2009Recovery Series - Topic 1: Designing Trash, Paperboard Contamination
Hello All I have a question ...
Posted March 19, 2009
Comments
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Reuse
. . . . 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!
reuse
. . . 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.
reuse
. . . 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
reuse
. . . 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
Danger Danger ... Misuse of Reuse
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
Sourcing cradle-to-cradle inks, laquers, varnishes
Hello Kristiane In my own research I have found that linseed oil based inks have lower toxicity than soy based inks due to the additional polymers needed to bring the soy oil to the right viscosity vs linseed oil. Not sure if you are getting recipe data from the ink providers (they are usally pretty skiddish about giving the keys to the kindgom out to the public beyond VOC PPM). Regarding coatings, our general rule is aqueous when possible over UV. Of course, a majority of our work in on fiber based substrates vs Al and PP. Please if you don't mind use this string to summarize your findings. I think we are all curious as to what you find. Regards Sean
Sustainable Packaging in Supply Chain Context
And imagine what happens to the SIG Combibloc model and their marketing share when crude surpasses $100/barrel again ... Imagine how painful it will be to procure EPS foam vs nested thermoform, molded pulp or Paperfoam. Imagine how those extended supply chain models that wrap around the globe are impacted. We may want to dig deeper and quantify the impact of WHERE we buy from and WHERE we pack out now while the luxury is performing environmental impact analysis to move closer to a sustainable solution before the fiscal constraints of the alternative drive everyone into a frenzy Advantage to the forward thinkers who consider packaging within the context of sustainable supply chains Great post Dean
Sustainable Packaging in Supply Chain Context
Hello Timothy Excellent dialogue. In particular I'd like to focus on a couple of your comments ... "Companies can make good decisions when they are based on a broad and deep systems-based look at the specifics of the situation, and where good data are available." Expanding our data set and analysis to assess origin foot-printing of materials (middle east vs us refineries and extruders, etc) and quantifying distance travelled impact (truck to rail to truck to ocean to truck vs localized trucking, etc) gives us a more thorough impact analysis. As the title of your post states "Hard to separate elements when taking systems look", it is harder but not impossible and some of the tools and data sets out there are being used improperly when making decisions about materials. Partly because the lack of understanding of or the methodology used in the LCA. If people are using the LCA metrics in the Wal-Mart scorecard to determine paper vs plastic or one resin or substrate or another when considering sourcing repercussions from any region other than the US, they are skewing their analysis. Not only is distance traveled not considered but the LCA metrics are specific to a region not general to the worldwide packaging industry. I think we can polish this up a bit as a sustainable packaging community. There is data out there and we need to facilitate the sharing of that data whether it means transport mode impact or the varying LCA data behind the BOM from different regions. Awesome. I hope we get more people posting to this string because this dialogue needs more debate, participants and due diligence.
Sustainable Packaging in Supply Chain Context
I'm a bit concerned to read comments like "If you are shipping packaging materials across the Pacific it has little impact" and “ocean transportation (per container) is relatively efficient.". A few points here ... -Containers do not mysteriously appear on the water and leap from the port of arrival to their final destination. Trucking is almost always involved for haulage between the berths and wherever they come from or go to (sometimes rail is involved but inevitably a majority of movements involve trucking). Of course, this isn't including the stevedoring, etc -Whenever you remove, reduce or eliminate trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic surface movement of goods you reduce or eliminate an environmental impact. It may not be as significant as a commensurate distance travelled via truck transport but it is an impact negated nonetheless -I haven't come across a consumer product OEM yet with a supply chain that wraps around the planet that ships exclusively by water ... almost always air cargo shipping is involved in some proportion of the business and some products ship predominately via air (high tech electronics, etc) -Consider in some models how much stock on hand you must keep in the chain to account for this extended lead time scenario ... in some of these models the longer the lead time the more inventory which means more "stuff" and a commensurate impact including scrap and obsolescence The point here is not that ocean transport or multi-national/multi-regional supply chains are bad ... I make my living in this space. The point is WHERE you source packaging and WHERE you elect to package goods within the context of a supply chain is relevant to environmental impact. If you can source locally and capture the footprint variance it's a win outside the material spec. In specific regards to the intl scenario, if you postpone your packaging and reduce the footprint of the goods travelling across the pond you reduce transit instances and most likely scrap and obsolescence in region with a more agile supply chain solution This is where I would like to see a bit more dialogue. Packaging strategy within a supply chain context and how firms can start thinking of other ways to reduce environmental impact outside the BOM
How the whole sustainable picture is evolving...
I remember a few years ago when sustainable packaging was cutting edge rhetoric within smaller circles and the Wal-Mart scorecard was a gleam in someones eye. I recall just how difficult it was to find organic foods (milk, eggs, meat, etc) at the supermarket and green household cleaners, paint, etc in the DIY chains and now these products are replacing more and more conventional product shelf space. While hybrid cars and renewable energy aren't moving at the pace we all like I don't beleive that consumer habits along this front as quite as fickle as the previous posts have eluded to ... and definitely not a temporary state due to a slowing economy. We have a come along way in the past few years and those of you who attended the Sustainable Packaging Coalition event in Chicago last month would remember the European ogranization INCPEN stating just how quickly the US is catching up with Europe regarding all things sustainable. Take a peak at ISO 26000 launching next year and you have to concede that CSR is not a fad either. When you throw in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index on top of it you will see that even if consumer habits are wanting, the investing community is evolving along this front as well and will be placing additional pressure on firms regardless of whether they "get it" or not. Whether you are working in the LEED space, agribusiness, automotive or packaging you can't afford to sit back and assume this is going to slow down - ever. If you are one of our competitors we hope you do.