In the last of my four-part series, I’ll describe the new tertiary packaging model in COMPASS® (comparative packaging assessment) which is being released on October 7, 2013.
There is no better way to understand something than to tear it down and rebuild it. At least that’s my motto…sometimes. When it came to building the tertiary packaging model for COMPASS® the research was interesting but it wasn’t until I began to fundamentally unravel several types of pallets that I realized all the thought that goes into designing them to meet the specified use scenarios. In the process, I collected and dismantled block type and stringer type pallets, the kind used to move groceries and construction materials in the U.S., and some specialized pallets used for shipping large office equipment. The goal was to understand the configuration, the nailing pattern, the number and type of fasteners used, the identity of wood types, and the overall weight of the pallet. In the process, I amassed a pile of lumber, some softwood species and some hardwood species, a lot of bent and rusted nails and calloused hands. This was the beginning of the parallel projects—on one hand life cycle data modeling and software development for COMPASS, and on the other hand, utilizing the lumber for creative up-cycling efforts (see A Wood Pallet’s Artful Journey).
The first effort (LCA – Life Cycle Assessment – data modeling and software development for COMPASS) led to collaboration with faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s industry leadership committee (ILC) on transport packaging, and other experts in tertiary packaging. The result was the inclusion of tertiary packaging components into the screening LCA workflow of COMPASS. The new additions expand the packaging system to include primary packages inside secondary shippers with supporting components, and a unit count of these assemblies on a pallet or other B2B delivery format with supporting components such as wraps, straps and cushioning. In effect, the packaging portrayed in the image below plus all the intermediary transportation needed to move packaged goods from manufacture to the retail shelf can now be captured in COMPASS.
Designing Sustainability Into Packaging
The packaging design process, as with other design exercises, starts with a need and moves to ideation. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ideal tool to allow exploration of different concepts to fulfill the identified need, and select the choice that best fits the sustainability priorities of the company and the brand. Through the process, one can quantify environmental impacts for impact categories such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fossil fuel consumption, water consumption, human health, aquatic toxicity and others. Having this kind of information during the early design steps expands the ability of design professionals to include environmental impacts of a package design into the decision-making process along with the more traditional considerations like cost, performance, aesthetic and regulatory parameters. The result is a whole-system perspective that can produce packages that are optimized for a specific set of criteria to be more sustainable.
COMPASS is a streamlined LCA software specifically tailored for packaging design evaluation. It is an effective tool to help make informed design decisions that are aligned with the company’s greater sustainability goals. Leading brands, logistics companies, consultancies, and academic institutions all use COMPASS to build better packaging for today’s marketplace.
New changes in the packaging community related to environmental performance reporting are driving industry toward consistent B2B data sharing and enhanced transparency about the materials and processes used to develop both package and product. In the packaging community, these initiatives include the Global Protocol for Packaging Sustainability (GPPS) and the GS1 reporting standard. The GPPS contains a set of performance indicators for packaging that are now incorporated in the GS1 barcode system and will soon allow easy sharing of key environmental indicator data in the GPPS between trading partners. At stake are such lofty and core sustainability principles as embedding systems thinking into package and product design, benchmarking and performance tracking, and data transparency for B2B supply chain communication. On this path, companies will need a simple way to calculate the impacts associated with their packages for value chain disclosure, and COMPASS can help.
With this expanded model, one can compare primary packaging alternatives starting at the concept stage, include the secondary containment options, factor in tertiary packaging components such as pallets, slip sheets, edge cushion, wraps and straps, and account for all intermediate transportation legs needed to move the finished product to a retail chain. Detailed information such as this can enhance the ability of businesses to incorporate sustainability parameters effectively into operations and incrementally move the overall SOP towards a new norm—one that can lead to an enhanced materials management economy: a sustainable economy.
Such incremental operational improvements are essential to fulfill the vision of sustainable materials management (SMM) where materials are used in a carefully considered and wise manner, where toxicity and adverse effects are minimized or eliminated by design, and where material recovery is optimized so that the materials that are collected can fulfill their full life cycle potential by being available for new packaging and products. Life cycle assessment is the only comprehensive method that can help businesses glean environmental impacts associated with their processes, products, and services. Its widespread usage into everyday practice is essential to measuring and tracking progress to be able to make the necessary course corrections on the sustainability journey towards an industrial system with greater environmental stewardship.
Visit https://design-compass.org or contact me at info@design-compass.org to learn more about LCA or COMPASS. Also, feel free to connect with me on Twitter @amistryman
Category: Eliminate Toxicity
In this part three of a four part series, I’d like to explore the creative side of the life cycle of some pallets. There is a growing urban hobbyists movement that uses the pallet to make basic yet creative products; check out 35 Creative Ways To Recycle Wooden Pallets for examples. Approaching the problem from a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) perspective, however, I became intrigued by the relatively low public profile tertiary packages (sometimes called transport packaging) play in comparison to the flashier on-the-shelf primary packages. Secondary and tertiary packages understandably play the supporting role to the charismatic primary packages that are designed to get our attention. Yet without the supporting cast, the lead role would scarcely be very effective.
As the product owner of GreenBlue’s COMPASS® (comparative packaging assessment), an LCA tool tailored for packaging design evaluation and improvement, I was interested in developing a comprehensive model that applies LCA to quantify the environmental burdens associated with the entire packaging system needed to deliver a product to the store shelf, including all the intermediate steps. Along with the requisite research, software development, data modeling, and validation steps, I also embarked on a journey to learn about the materials that made up the ubiquitous wood pallet. I was interested in the potential of the materials—not mere reuse or recycle, but potentially up-cycling into truly long lived products. There is a lot of hardwood used in pallets made in the U.S. South East and I wanted to explore the potential of the material with its built-in limitations. I had just completed construction of my own Three Beagle Workshop, and this challenge was perfect for my interest in multimedia art made with materials from found objects. And, I found pallets almost everywhere!
The first task was to tear down a few pallets and see what made them work. It seemed simple enough a task, but it proved be more difficult than expected. You see, pallets, even the expendable types, are very well constructed and able to withstand a great deal of force. Muscle power wasn’t enough to produce usable pieces of lumber so I employed power tools and decided to cut the nails instead of pulling them out to separate the various parts. This worked well and I soon had a decent pile of wood parts of fairly uniform, though worn, looking lumber. The next, more creative part of the job was to envision the potential locked within the limited configuration of the boards and planks. I was intent on producing a product that did not resemble a pallet as the example in the above link, and still retained the distinct characters of wood that had lived a completely different life. This meant working with the dents, the knots, and most of all lumber with nails in them!
The first couple of products still had remnants of the pallet. Here is one 48″x48″ 2-way entry stringer type pallet reconfigured into a potting table:
And a sturdy European block pallet (EPAL) that had some mass to it. It became the base for a small wood shed to complement the backyard fire pit. Both of these items were functional and long-lived, yet they reveal the pallet origins, so back to the drawing board. Both pallets were destined to be hauled away in the municipal solid waste (MSW) and disposed at the landfill or at best turned into mulch.
Any woodworker knows the havoc nails in wood can cause on hand and power tools alike. But, I was determined, and with a bit of planning and patience, success! Here is the result of patience and working with the limitation imposed by the materials at hand. In the end, the success was more rewarding because the final product proudly exhibited the scars borne of the past life of the lumber. And, from an aesthetic perspective, the piece below reveals the grace that comes from passage of time and weathering. See for yourself:
Of course, there was a pile of spare parts that couldn’t be thrown away. When the opportunity to design a display for a collection of native bird painting arose, they were just perfect. With a bit of imagination those bits and pieces from several pallets were reborn as a gallery display for Virginia bird paintings.
This creative process of tearing down wooden pallets paralleled the LCA model development process for COMPASS, and invariably influenced the nuances therein. In the next and final article, we will examine the depth of the tertiary packaging model in COMPASS.
Until then, if you want to keep the conversation going, connect with me on Twitter at @amistryman or comment below.
In “At the Intersection of Standards and Sustainability,” published in the March/April 2013 issue of Standardization News, editor in chief Maryann Gorman wrote, “… modern development — manufacturing, infrastructure projects, building construction and so on — takes place in a vast and interconnected world of systems. Global supply chains, regional regulatory schemes and the emergence of integrated systems like intelligent highways and buildings mean that most materials are produced within overlapping economic, social, regulatory, environmental and material requirements. And it is at this intersection that standards and sustainability meet.”
For the packaging community, standardization for measurement of sustainability performance started its journey in 2009 with the release of GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition®-produced “Sustainable Packaging Indicators and Metrics Framework©.” The Framework synthesized the vast body of measurement literature into a core set of indicators relevant to the packaging supply chain. Then in 2011, the Consumer Goods Forum picked up this work and condensed the effort into the Global Protocol for Packaging Sustainability (GPPS 2.0), which provides a common language for packaging sustainability related measurements. Presently, the set of environmental attributes and life cycle indicators within GPPS are poised to be released into a global GS1 standard that will provide a platform for submitting and the sharing environmental measurements between producers and retailers in a consistent and unified manner.
The GS1 GDS-GPP Packaging Sustainability Standard is in review and comments phase and is scheduled for release this summer. With the rollout of this additional layer into GS1 standard platform, a producer can release sustainability-related data via the GS1 global trade item number (GTIN) barcode system, thus allowing buyers to gain access to those data without the producer having to fulfill multiple requests from buyers from different retailers for the same information. Such central data sharing will allow ease of communication along the supply chain and with luck, facilitate overall transparency, benchmarking, and tracking progress for product categories.
One clarification: the GS1 standard only standardizes the reporting and sharing of sustainability indicators related to a package based on its assigned barcode. It does not standardize the methods by which the measurements are calculated. That is a different conversation. Stay tuned for the standard’s release date this summer.
