Don’t lightweight it, rightweight it!

Everybody in the UK packaging industry is aware of the continuous pressure to reduce the total amount of packaging used in the supply of goods. For example, the target described in WRAP’s Courtauld Commitment 2 is to reduce the carbon impact of grocery packaging by 10% between 2010 and 2012.

One of the main ways of achieving this target is to increase the recycling rate. As far as the corrugated packaging industry is concerned, we have already pretty much reached a peak on this, achieving a recycling rate of over 80% and with, on average, 76% of every corrugated pack consisting of recycled fibres.

The other way of reducing carbon impact in Courtauld Commitment 2 is by reducing the use of materials, or ‘lightweighting’. However, an obsession with lightweighting could take our industry’s customers, such as the large food and drink companies and retailers, down a wrong track.

When it comes to the corrugated pack the key word is not ‘lightweighting’ but ‘rightweighting’. A lighter weight pack may be less efficient at reducing carbon than a heavier weight pack. This is the point that is so often missed in debates about the more environmentally efficient use of corrugated packaging.

So I would like to explain why we think there is, in fact, only one sensible way of achieving carbon reduction targets for the long term, and that is to encourage all packaging buyers to move to a performance-based specification method.

In a nutshell, performance-based packaging works to reduce carbon because of the way it acts as a catalyst for major carbon savings throughout the supply chain, starting at the manufacturers’ line-side packing operations.

Let’s take this step by step.

First, it is important to understand that corrugated board is immensely flexible in the way it can be cut and shaped to almost any dimension. This gives packaging designers the opportunity to create packs that take into account every single variable in the supply chain. In other words, a corrugated pack can be perfectly optimised for a specific product in a specific supply chain.

So, back to line-side packing, where the opportunity lies to design the pack to enable fast and efficient packing operations, saving both money and carbon. Then the filled pack is put on a pallet. In order to stack the pallet to the widest and highest extent, the pack dimensions, and the weight of the pack to prevent crushing, need to be ideal for that particular product and pallet. A pack that is too light will cause damage – a pack that is too heavy will waste money. Like Goldilocks’ porridge, it needs to be ‘just right’.

Now when pallets are stacked to their fullest extent, you can start taking lorries off the road, saving fuel and preventing carbon emissions. That’s because the lorries can be filled more efficiently. The same applies to warehouses. All these space efficiencies add up to huge savings in both cash and carbon. Remember, this might be as a result of producing a heavier corrugated pack.

Then there are the commercial opportunities that this same corrugated pack can provide at the point of sale. The pack also has to fill its shelf space in the most efficient way to increase the availability of product. When no longer needed, the entire pack can be recycled, and its fibres are back on the shelf in another pack within 10 days!

Why then is the performance-based specification of packaging not universally adopted? Reasons include a widespread lack of technical packaging skills, inadequate training to keep specifiers up to date with the latest design expertise, and a tendency to specify by material.