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Heyyyyyyy! I just booked my flights to Orlando to speak at Sustainability in Packaging, Feb. 22nd-24th. Hurray!

AND, drum roll please, DA BEARS! It is going to be an awesome showdown between the Packers and the Bears—I can’t wait!

Sooo today is going to be a longer post, providing feedback from Sustainable Plastics Packaging and the Walmart SVN I attended the second week of December.

Let’s see…I know I summarized most of the SPP conference…where did I leave off…

That’s right: My December 29th post finished with my comments about Brandimage—an industrial designer firm, which developed a silly molded pulp water bottle.

The next presenter was Patty from Klockner Pentaplast—she has always been very nice to me and when I found out she was presenting at the same conference I emailed her saying good luck and explaining how nervous I was. She replied that I should think of the audience as the fathers, brothers, daughters, mothers—real people— they are and how I wouldn’t be nervous presenting in front of my own mother, sister, etc.; therefore, why should I be nervous presenting in front of these people? I thought that was really awesome advice…

ANYWAY, Patty gave a really great presentation insofar as she made an argument for plastic packaging in the context of sustainability. By describing a case study in which her company and its partner worked with a pizza producer to redesign its packaging to be more efficient, Patty illustrated how in switching the fiber-based box for a flexible plastic tray and lid, the shelf life of the pizza itself was greatly extended. Because a TON of our natural resources are consumed in the production of food, it is super duper important to ensure that the package medium used to get the foodstuff from the point of production to consumption is efficient and protects the product from spoilage and other health/quality concerns. PlasticsNews reporter Mike Verespej does a great job tying Patty’s argument that packaging can reduce total system waste i.e. food spoilage, into some of the other points made throughout the conference in this article.

And before I forget, it is important to understand that fiber-based pizza boxes are not usually accepted for recycling due to the high concentration of food contamination; be it plastic or paper, the liklihood that this packaging type is or will be recycled is very, very low, due to the economics of cleaning this material for reprocessing.

AND I loved Patty’s reference to “Frustration Free” packaging. As most of you know, I represent a thermoformer of clamshells, which are often times blamed for igniting RAGE in consumers due to their inability to penetrate the cold, plastic exterior of the package to get to the product itself. I wrote a satirical piece on wrap rage in the perceptive section of PlasticsNews; check it out here, it’s sort of funny.

Anyway, Amazon.com came out with “Frustration Free” packaging, which supposedly is mostly fiber-based and allows consumers to easily remove their products, without falling into the much-feared WRAP RAGE state of confusion. The specific example she gave were for CDs: previously packaged in a plastic clamshell to ensure product protection throughout the shipping supply chain, Amazon now packages CDs in a paper envelope with padding. According to customer accounts, numerous CDs were received broken, which ultimately resulted in more supply chain waste when compared with the plastic clamshell package that resulted in no product rejects. Go figure! I guess it depends what your priorities are: an intact product or a package that allows you to tear into it with your bear claws…

OH, before I forget, Mark of Brandimage did make some really great points about how consumers make decisions. He referenced Harvard academic Zaitman, who spent extensive time researching how consumers react to ads and products, concluding that most consumers’ decisions to buy or not to buy are based on 5% conscious thought and 95% unconscious thought. CRAZY! So much for market research, ha! No, but in all seriousness, I do think there is something to say with how a lot of our decisions are based on emotion instead of logical reasoning. After all, I really don’t think I need a crystal Chicago skyline paperweight, but when I saw it at the checkout counter just staring at me in all its reflectivity and gloss, I couldn’t help myself! So yea, he called this immeasurable reality between conscious and unconscious thought in the context of dictating consumers’ reactions to products, “creative economy.”

OK, next I want to talk about Terry of the Shelton Group. Her company provides LCA software that allows product producers to quantify the environmental profile of their products in the design phase. Like COMPASS, this software allows you to build a product archetype i.e. toaster, and then manipulate different aspects of the product i.e. material and/or electrical components, to see where your environmental “hot spots” are in order to work to elivaite said hot spots in your supply chain. So, if you were sourcing your toasters from aluminum mined in the Far East (I am being vague because I have NO idea how this resource is procured for industry) and found out that the process of aluminum production for your toaster results in the highest concentration of VOC emissions, or something, you could choose to source your aluminum from a recycled aluminum mill domestically located, thereby reducing the total supply chain and overall “carbon footprint” of the product. She also referenced the Storyofstuff.com, which is a cartoony representation of the inefficiencies of most product productions’ supply chain. Check out there most recent cartoon, the Story of Electronics, here.

Terry suggested that from a competitive standpoint, one could use this software to conduct LCAs of a concept vs. a manufactured good vs. your competitor's good and make an argument depending on the software data output in the context of sustainability.

OH, and for more information on this product LCA software (she did some live demos and it seems AWESOME), visit sustainableminds.com and sign up for their free webinars.

Next I want to summarize Sean of ModusLink’s presentation, as it was the first time I was ever introduced to such a macrocosm view of “sustainability.” For those of you unfamiliar, ModusLink is a company that specializes in taking consumer electronic products from the point of conception i.e. an awesome new invention or product, to the point of production through fulfillment, distribution, and consumption. Because most of their clients are large consumer electronic manufacturers, which is itself an extremely competitive market, ModusLink uses various tools that allow them to take a supply-chain approach and determine the most efficient, and therefore “sustainable” way to move product throughout the supply chain. In order to put the audience in a total supply-chain frame of mind, Sean gave the following example of how manufacturing, assembly, logistics, and environment must all be taken into account when assessing a product's total supply chain:

Ex1: Overseas manufacturing of product and packaging

Low cost of labor
Low raw material costs
High logistics costs
High green house gas emissions

VS.

Ex2: Domestic manufacturing of product and packaging

High cost of labor
High material costs
Low logistic costs
Low GHG emissions

In a nut shell: there is always a tradeoff; ModusLink will assess the tradeoffs via fancy software and present clients with the most efficient option for supply chain management.

The software cited during Sean’s presentation, which I know so little about, are:
Lllamasoft/Tableau/CAD/ESKO.

And that’s the last presentation of the day I saw! I skipped out and had non-hotel produced food for the first time in days with Sean!

And again, for more feedback on this conference, check out the editorials in PlasticsNews!

AND, to end today's post, check out this abstract art collection of environmental disaster photographs. My favorite is the "Facial Tissues" image showing the pollution resulting from pulp mills in the production of Kleenex and what not.

Tootles!

Hey! For those of you that have your toes in B2B marketing, check out all the tools available for download here. I found the "helpful documentation" to be super helpful when trying to design an integrated marketing campaign…

So this is random but we have suspended composting Dordan’s food and yard waste for the winter because it seems as though the microorganisms are hibernating! As it stands, it looks more like a pile of stuff than a home-grown pile of compost! C’est le vie!

I will keep you updated on Dordan’s social and environmental sustainability efforts as they unfold and progress into 2011, but in the mean time, feel free to peruse the partially complete description of our goals here.

Okkkk so where were we? That’s right, SPP feedback.

After I drank a celebratory beer following my presentation, I returned to the conference, where Scott Steele of Plastics Technologies explained how reducing packaging may not always be the best approach to cost savings/sustainability. He spoke specifically of the dramatic material reductions in the PET bottle, which anyone can tell you have been down gauged to the extreme; just ask my 95 year-old grandmother! His argument was actually very powerful because he explained that if you reduce the material consumed per package as an attempt of saving green, then due diligence must be taken throughout the production and distribution supply chain in order to ensure no damage to the product (or anything else) arises from this packaging reduction. I know this is a little crazy but he even referenced a store clerk dying, heaven forbid, because the bottles had been down-gauged to the point that they could not support the top load of the skid, which all came crashing down after the PE shrink wrap was removed…yikes!

By the by, all the presentations are available for download here.

The last presentation of the day was JoAnne Hines, the “Packaging Diva,” who discussed the Sun Chip compostable bad “situation.” I had heard bits and pieces about the Packaging Diva over the year so I was thrilled to see her in the flesh! She was a very comfortable public speaker and I enjoyed her sarcasm! Basically she discussed the Sun Chips compostable bag innovation/market flop, and what that says about the intersection between sustainability/packaging/consumer preferences. For those of you unfamiliar, the Sun Chip compostable bag, launched on Earth Day in 2010 (I think) by Frito-Lay, resulted in declining sales across all chip style categories because consumers complained that the compostable bag was “too noisy.” Just youtube Sun Chips compostable bag and you will be overwhelmed with the negative feedback generated via consumers/social networking sites.

All in all, a good presentation and a favorable one to end the day on!

The second day of the conference began with a presentation from an Industrial Designer from Brandimage—Desgrippes & Laga. He was charming and had a very good on-stage presence. However, being a designer, his assumptions about what is “green” were more so based on generic understandings then sound science. Perhaps a discussion of one of his companies’ new concepts will speak to this point…

Brandimage has created a molded pulp water bottle that has a plastic laminate inside the bottle, to keep the liquid from leaching through the paper. From a design standpoint, it looks pretty cool, because the bottles actually lay flat throughout production and it is not until you force water inside that its shape takes form. However, as an attempt to be more “sustainable” than the classic PET bottles, there are many problems. For instance, the weight of a molded pulp water bottle filled would dramatically exceed the weight of the down gauged PET bottles of today’s market; therefore, the energy required to move the bottles from the point of production through distribution would exceed that of PET bottles. Next, because of the plastic laminate on the inside of the bottle, these disposable containers (I don’t see how they could be resused…) can’t be recycled. Because NAPCOR and others have invested a considerable amount in the development of the PET recycling infrastructure (PET bottles are the highest recycled plastic container in North America), it doesn’t make sense to introduce an alternative material into the bottle market. In other words, because the recovery infrastructure already exists for PET bottles, but doesn’t for laminated paper products, it does not make sense to replace PET bottles with molded pulp ones in the context of end-of-life management.

After he presented I told him that I thought he did a great job, but that his molded pulp bottle concept was really silly. He was a good sport about it!

OK, I know I have a lot more updates to rally to you all, but I leave for Mexico tomorrow for VACATION!!!!! Therefore, I wanted to leave you with something a little more…something.

First, watch “The Future of Food;” it will blow your mind.

Next, visit The Cosmetic Database and search by product brand i.e. Burts Bees, or product type i.e. mascara. You will be shocked!

Then, read “Poorly Made in China."

And lastly, read this Chicago Tribue article.

If you do so in that order, you will feel as though I did last week—terrible terrible terrible! I am not trying to be a weirdo but being a sustainability coordinator for a plastic packaging company allows you to make arguments for business practices in the context of ethics; be it workers rights, the environment, whatever. That being said, when I come across things like “The Future of Food” and a database for cosmetics that details all the terrible things in the products we consume each day AND then find out that the water I have been drinking for the last 5 years has cancer causing agents in it you begin to wonder about this whole sustainability jazz. Trust me, I am genuinely a die-hard environmentalist; I have always been and will always continue to be so. However, while I truly enjoy working towards a more sustainable packaging industry, I find myself struggling with the following ethical conundrum: if the products that we are packaging in our “sustainable material” are themselves harmful (cosmetics, food, etc.) to the person consuming them, the environment, and the social fabric in which it was produced and distributed, then why so much hype on the sustainability of a package? Shouldn’t we be more concerned about how products themselves are manufactured i.e. what goes into them and what comes out, then how in reducing a package by X amount, you get more product per pallet, cheaper shipping, and so on?!?

I’m sorry—I swear—I am never a Debby downer but for some reason this whole dealio is really bothering me. I am meeting with my old ethics professor the third week of January so hopefully he can help set me straight…

Let us end our sort of depressing post with the following even more depressing post from Enviroblog, which details the worst environmental disasters of 2010. Happy New Year! Ha.

Cheers!