Packaging, supply & logistics
Yet those who want to improve sustainability in healthcare packaging face a multitude of barriers. That includes the scale of the challenge but also the price. “Everyone wants greener material [more sustainable packaging] but no one wants to pay for it,” says Barak. “So suppliers have to be both cost-effective and environmentally friendly, which is a challenge.” In addition, any redesign of packaging – at least for medical devices and medicines that require sterilisation – also has to adhere to strict regulations, such as ISO 11607, set by the International Organisation of Standardisation. Plus, the packaging still needs to do its primary job: guaranteeing protection and ease of use of the product.
Appetite for change
Notwithstanding such difficulties, the industry is taking sustainability in packaging seriously. Barak explains how efforts are expanding: first from cardboard use in packaging to focus on plastic. “Before we were involved, everything [all other materials in packaging] was sustainable apart from the plastic,” she explains. Broadly, sustainability efforts are directed at the institutional level. In the UK, the NHS, back in 2019, identified the need to reduce single-use plastics across the entire supply chain. In 2024, the EU adopted new rules around plastic packaging waste, including reducing unused space in packaging and moving towards an eventual ban on single-use plastics in packaging. As such, the industry is stepping up. Sanofi recently moved one of its vaccines into plastic-free cardboard packaging, reducing plastic use by 130t in 2023. AstraZeneca also moved from single-use boxes in clinical trial products to reusable packaging, resulting in a 98% return and reuse rate of said boxes.
24 The sector’s
estimated annual plastic use.
Healthcare Plastic Recycling Council (HPRC)
86
million tonnes
Elsewhere, Smith + Nephew has moved towards sourcing materials for its packaging from responsibly-managed forests and adding more recycled content into its packaging materials. For one of the England-headquartered firm’s foam dressing products, within the most packaging- intense side of the business, there was a recent redesign of packaging to be up to 46% smaller, taking down CO2
emissions by 193t.
Barak, for her part, certainly feels that there’s an appetite to do better all over the market. “While we are only doing the flexible plastics [film coating for medical boxes] we have been approached for [more sustainable] blister packaging too,” she says.
Simulating solutions
But sustainable packaging must still meet both customer and regulators’ needs. As Camilla
Enkbridge, chief technology officer at medical and pharmaceutical packaging solutions provider Envirotainer, explains, the design stage of packaging is critical in addressing these demands while ensuring sustainability. Indeed, a 2024 Waste Management study found that understanding the whole packaging life cycle at the design stage – inclusive of materials choice to dimensions – can help improve sustainability efforts. For instance, designing materials with lower production impacts, such as using PVC-Alu for blister packs. However, the design process itself can be time- intensive. In a recent European Pharmaceutical Manufacturer article, a manager at the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations described how changing packaging requires the need for new studies and guarantees of sterility within stringent regulatory conditions. This can slow down the speed to market.
Some in the field, including Envirotainer, have turned to simulation analysis, or simulation testing, as a possible solution. This is software that allows different packaging designs to be evaluated without needing to create a physical prototype. “Simulation plays an important role in developing our solutions,” explains Enkbridge. “By utilising [simulation] we can shorten our development time and faster adapt to changes optimising the performance.” She notes that simulation can use past data to predict packaging outcomes, such as how specific elements in the packaging might perform or how it responds to different environments. “Multiple simulations analyse different aspects of how different building blocks in our solutions impact the performance under different conditions.”
Nic Hunt, executive committee member of the HPRC, penned a Medical Plastics article in agreement. Here, he wrote, simulation might allow better outcomes by signposting opportunities for material reduction or design reconfiguration. “This not only accelerates the design process but also minimises resource consumption and waste generation associated with traditional trial-and- error methods,” he wrote. The subtext: fewer mistakes, less waste, lower cost.
As Hunt argues, simulations allow for improved scenario testing and sensitivity analysis, simulating real-world conditions and stressors to ensure sustainability but also reliability and performance. This addresses not only the design of the packaging itself but how it responds to transportation, storage and end-of-life scenarios, to further improve sustainability across its life cycle.
Medical Device Developments /
www.medicaldevice-developments.com
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