Environmental delivery

18 June 2009



A recent study has confirmed the benefits of using RTP to transport goods and reduce carbon footprint


As retailers and their suppliers look to minimise their carbon footprint, packaging has an increasingly important role to play in helping to reduce the environmental cost of transporting goods. Returnable transit packaging (RTP), in the form of plastics trays and containers, has become an established method for packaging and moving goods ranging from delicate components through to clothes and grocery products. Indeed, there are in excess of 200mn plastics RTP containers servicing companies of all kinds throughout Europe today.

The popularity of RTP is down to the fact that once you have invested in a fleet you can expect to re-use it time and time again. Recognised as a real workhorse in the supply chain, the average life of a plastics container is seven years, and many last much longer. They then can be recycled at the end of their working life to make new from old.

Driven by the need to be increasingly lightweight, the latest containers are designed to reduce fuel costs significantly and much work has been done to minimise the size of containers when empty so that they nest or fold down to reduce the amount of space they take up in the return supply chain.

Plastics trays are available in a wide range of heights and footprints to suit the size and shape of contents. Linpac Allibert Maxinest trays also have dual-height versions with two or three stacked heights, enabling the user to transport loads of varying height, eliminating costly wasted space within the distribution vehicle.

Now, plastics RTP is the first product of its kind to be fully tested against the new standard PAS (Publicly Available Specification) 2050: 2008 Assessment of the Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Goods and Services. The new standard, introduced and endorsed by the Carbon Trust and its partners, is the only available benchmark for this kind of assessment. It sets a level playing field against which all companies can measure the carbon footprint of their products.

Carried out by independent environmental consultancy Sustain, the assessment measures the performance of very specific, comparable containers within very specific criteria in accordance with the requirements of PAS2050, to take account of the whole life cycle of a product.

The study looked at Linpac Allibert‘s Maxinest tray with bale arms, which is a standard RTP crate used for transporting fruit, vegetables and other consumable food products, and the company’s new folding tray for the supermarket sector, which folds down to the smallest height of any similar products on the market.

The findings demonstrated that the carbon footprint of Linpac Allibert’s RTP is 67.8 per cent less than board.

The findings apply to these two ranges of plastics crates manufactured in PP at its plants in France, Germany, Spain and the UK, and takes into account variables for each country such as energy use. Raw materials, transport and energy use in the manufacturing process, distribution from Linpac Allibert‘s sites, and eventual disposal and recycling are also taken into account.

The performance of the folding and Maxinest trays was compared to a standard board box FEFCO (code 0411), 600 x 400 x 180 mm, weighing 0.654 kg, used for a single trip and then collected and disposed of or recycled after each trip, and again includes transport and manufacturing, raw materials and energy use.

Because plastics crates are continually re-used throughout their life, we’ve always believed that their environmental impact would be much less than one-trip packaging. For the first time, this new standard has enabled us to put this to the test and the results enable us to re-assure our customers that plastics RTP is indeed an effective tool in enabling them to reduce their carbon footprint.

The UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050. Any retailers who want to reduce their carbon footprint should be re-assured by these findings, but we should not be complacent. These findings enable us to examine in detail the potential for reducing carbon emissions still further in the future.

Danilo Oliynik is commercial director of Linpac Allibert


Plastics trays are available in a wide range of heights and footprints to suit the size and shape of contents

Plastics trays are available in a wide range of heights and footprints to suit the size and shape of contents Plastics trays are available in a wide range of heights and footprints to suit the size and shape of contents


Privacy Policy
We have updated our privacy policy. In the latest update it explains what cookies are and how we use them on our site. To learn more about cookies and their benefits, please view our privacy policy. Please be aware that parts of this site will not function correctly if you disable cookies. By continuing to use this site, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy unless you have disabled them.