Cover story Packaging
The pint of no return
Innovation in packaging can result in huge savings for businesses. But, as David Burrows reports, customer consideration is a key factor
T
he Jugit milk bag must be the Marmite of packaging. Sainsbury’s customers love it, with the supermarket “blown away” by demand since its launch in February. In fact, the latest design is now being rolled out to the retailer’s entire range of milk products, saving 1.4M kilogrammes of packaging a year and quite a few bob on manufacturing too. Yet at Waitrose, milk turned sour on the
shelves as the supermarket’s traditionally eco- conscious customers turned their noses up at the idea of buying milk in a pouch, then trans- ferring it to a reusable jug for pouring. More milk was being wasted than the retailer was happy to accept, so the bags were ditched in favour of bottles with higher recycled content. It’s an intriguing situation, and one that highlights the complexities in today’s world of packaging – a world where the best envi- ronmentally-optimised solution is converted into the worst if it stays on the shelf and is withdrawn. Customer consideration is a key factor in packaging and there’s a balance to be found for every product. When it comes to innovation in fast moving consumer goods, many of the most success-
22 | Sustainable Business | October 2010
ful have been in packaging. Slimming down champagne bottles to cut weight, Velcro packs for cheese to minimise waste, removing stick- on labels and printing directly onto egg car- tons, to name but three. There are many more, with the majority unnoticed by consumers. But it’s those that are the most innovative and which require a change in consumer behaviour that provide the greatest challenge. That’s where the issues with the Jugit lie.
The best environmentally- optimised solution is converted into the worst if it stays on the shelf and is withdrawn
Waitrose realised this. Regardless of the 75% savings in material by using bags, chucking the milk away represented a far greater envi- ronmental impact. Indeed, it’s easy to forget, in the hype surrounding waste targets and regulations, the primary role of packaging: to protect, and thus to minimise waste. There are sound arguments to support the view that packaging is, on average, carbon
negative: it reduces far more greenhouse gases [GHGs] than are emitted in its manufacture and use simply by cutting product waste. Unless it’s not fit for purpose, of course. The fact that targets and policy are based on ton- nages has therefore caused some rebellion in the industry. “Just how thin did they want us to go?” remarks one packaging expert. The announcement earlier this year that phase two of the Courtauld Commitment – a voluntary agreement to cut packaging waste among major UK retailers and manufactur- ers – would include targets based on carbon provided some light relief. The release from Incpen, the Industry Council for Packaging and Environment, summed it up. “We’ve done packaging reduction, now let’s tackle resource efficiency.” Nampak Plastic’s business devel- opment director, James Crick, is similarly bullish, referring to carbon as “a more grown up” proxy for the environmental impact of packaging than weight.
More grown up – and more complicated. The advantages of using weight-based meas- urements are clarity, consistency and ease of measurement, and there are well estab-
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