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Sustainable packaging made easy: The Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool

March 17, 2010

Image: Ecolean

In the 1990s, huge numbers of Australian households took up kerbside recycling. Within a few years, the practice had become as much a part of the weekly routine as washing the car or mowing the lawn. Recycling made both consumers and industry feel good: for consumers, it meant taking some responsibility for their environmental impact; for the packaging industry, it meant their customers now felt that their packaging waste was being managed efficiently, relieving some of the pressure that was starting to build relative to industry practices.

But not everyone was so enamoured with the situation. With industry making no substantial financial contribution toward managing packaging waste, the cost was left to local governments, to the tune of $100 million a year. Something had to be done.

In 1999, federal and state governments, together with industry, developed the National Packaging Covenant (NPC), which sought to establish a framework of shared responsibility for managing post-consumer waste. Companies voluntarily signed up to the NPC, which sought to improve current recycling processes, and increase markets for the resulting materials. While the NPC was a catalyst for some change, because of its voluntary nature, many companies did not feel moved to really examine their process­es and lower their impact––and local government was still left with the tab for kerbside recycling, which, by 2005, was approaching $300 million.

As the decade wore on, consumers began to get wise to the fact that truly effective recycling involved much more than putting out the bins on a Wednesday night. Businesses soon felt the demand to develop more sustainable life cycles and materials for their products, but struggled with how to turn ideas into practice­­––and profit.

Enter the Sustainable Packaging Alliance. A joint initiative of RMIT University's Centre for Design, Victoria University's Plastics and Polymer Research Unit and Birubi Innovation, the SPA evaluated where sustainable packaging was at in Australia and found 'gaps relating to the knowledge, selection, design and use of sustainable packaging materials and the need for credible, business-ready tools to enable packaging environmental decision making.' In other words, companies needed simple, readily accessible means for moving towards sustainable packaging, or else it wasn't going to happen.

So the SPA developed the Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool (PIQET), which allows companies big and small to quickly and easily discover how their packaging practices impact the environment, and what available means there are to move toward more sustainable models.

Image: Nexus Productions

PIQET in practice

PIQET, a web-based tool, allows companies to assess all levels of their packaging and their impact on the environment. Constantly updated with industry practices and performance, PIQET helps companies to explore options for improvement at all stages of the supply chain, and to measure this improvement such that it can be reported back to stakeholders and the public.

So who is using it? Currently, the SPA says, the tool is being used by a wide range of businesses, including brand owners, retailers, packaging manufacturers, recyclers and raw material suppliers. Big brands like Cadbury-Schweppes, Nestle, Masterfoods, Lion Nathan have been using it­­, as is packaging giant Amcor. (Several of these companies were also involved in the tool's development.)

According to Ian Coles, chair of SPA, PIQET is much more efficient and comprehensive than any other tool currently available. 'Companies using the tool are able to assess the environmental impact of their proposed packaging over its lifespan within a matter of minutes––a task which previously would have taken many weeks, thousands of dollars to complete and could only be performed by a small number of life cycle assessment specialists,' he says.

PIQET is unique among environmental assessment tools, Coles says, in that it 'allows environmental considerations to be taken into account alongside financial and marketing elements­­––something that could not be done before.'

If your business is interested in moving toward a more sustainable packaging model, then PIQET is a great place to start. To register your interest, visit the PIQET site.

 

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