Spain: Standardizing packaging sustainability

TheCircularLab

The need to provide technical support and help all those involved in making decisions on packaging design has become an absolute priority for all eco-design projects led by TheCircularLab, the innovation center for circular economy of Ecoembes (Fig. 1).

In its first eco-design guide, the European Commission already identified the design stage as the most critical, since 80% of the environmental impact that a product will have throughout its life is generated in this stage.

TheCircularLab initiated the line of work in Packaging Circular Design (PakCD) to provide technical and objective information to all operators involved in the design of the final packaging placed on the market. This information, linked to the packaging sustainability, will help the design and make the decision on how that packaging will finally be within the value chain.

PakCD

The result has been the development of a tool with a high technological component, both in its methodological definition and in its materialization and execution. The tool is a web application, through which it will be possible to have objective information to differentiate between the multiple options, evaluating which is the best packaging solution.

The analysis results of the degree of sustainability of a packaging are transmitted through four categories (Fig 2.): functionality, environmental impact, treatment and second life.

How does this tool work?

Despite the complexity of analysis involved in the methodology for evaluating all the variables considered (Fig. 3), the tool has been developed to be easy to use.

The user only has to describe the packaging and wait for the tool to calculate and return the result.

The greatest added value of using this tool is being able to know, before the manufacturing process, what the degree of sustainability of the selected packaging solution will be.

The full article in Spanish can be found here: https://bit.ly/2DOVJNs

Source: retema.es