lished processes in place for measuring mate- rial by weight, which can help minimise costs. Because they don’t consider directly the envi- ronmental impacts of different outcomes, car- bon is now widely accepted as the way to go. There is the scope for it to become hugely complicated and difficult to measure, how- ever. Where are the boundaries set? Where do you start and where do you finish? Take a package that does its job well – its ben- efits in reducing waste wouldn’t be seen in a packaging life-cycle analysis [LCA] unless the potential waste was included in the study parameters. Whether one type of packaging is ‘better’ than another depends on the param- eters that take priority: packaging with a low carbon footprint is better if the parameter is
Mixed fortunes: Sainsbury’s custom- ers have taken to the Jugit, but Waitrose has found it more of a challenge to per- suade customers to buy milk in a pouch
carbon, but what if the concern is to keep as much resource in the system? The Jugit provides a useful illustration: 94% of councils collect milk bottles for recycling, but very few collect the used bags from Jugits. Are bottles therefore better? Swiss retailer, Migros, studied a similar product in the mid- 1990s and found there was less eco-impact to use bags and dispose of them, than to use other containers and to recycle them. Eric Johnson, MD of life-cycle specialists Atlantic Consulting, imagines that result still holds. Ideally the parameters should be extended to consider the life-cycle of the whole product – which could be a feature in phase three of the Courtauld Commitment. This doesn’t have to further complicate things, as Dr Adam Read, a waste management and resource efficiency practice lead at AEA Technology, explains. He says the impact of packaging becomes easier to understand if you look at specific product lines. That way you can analyse all the aspects of the product’s life-cycle to iden- tify the couple of stages where environmental impact is highest. The key stages are likely to involve transportation and manufacture,
A lot of bottle: most councils collect milk bottles for recycling, but very few collect the used Jugit bags. However, according to WRAP, even if pouches are landfilled or burned they still have a lower carbon footprint than the average HDPE plastic bottle
which are less visible to the consumer. “That might not be what you’re after in terms of green marketing initiatives,” says Read, “but small changes in these areas may actually have a more positive outcome.”
The marketers would prefer something vis- ible where any progress resonates highly, rightly or wrongly, with customers. Like plastic packaging: it’s visible and is therefore perceived as waste by the consumer, and is by turn an easy target for the politicians. Plastic bags are a case in point. In some towns you’ll be chased out for using one, with politicians and retailers having been quick to identify with the public on the issue. A series of initiatives has emerged (including Tesco’s astute marketing move to offer Clubcard points for shoppers re-using bags), helping to cut use by 43% in the past four years, accord- ing to WRAP.
Sustainable Business | October 2010 | 23
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