Evaluating Packaging Impacts

Would you like to go to market with a strong sustainability story for your new innovative package? Presenting accurate sustainability metrics of your design is important for you, your retailers and your customers.

What are the important metrics? How do you measure them?

There are many packaging “scorecards” popping up in the market, but most do not paint an accurate picture of your products environmental impacts. This is because scorecards are typically attribute based, and while many of these attributes are indispensable pieces of information, they do not in themselves necessarily indicate positive or negative environmental consequences. Instead, they must be used in connection with life cycle indicators and other attributes. Their validity depends on the specific case at hand and not all are valid for all applications.

Case study: Wal-Mart Packaging Scorecard

For example, the Wal-Mart Packaging Scorecard contains nine metrics. Eight are attributes, and one is a LCA inventory indicator, GHG/CO2 per ton of production

• GHG/CO₂ per ton of production
• Material Value
• Product/Package Ratio
• Cube Utilization
• Transportation
• Recycled Content
• Recovery Value
• Renewable Energy
• Innovation

The Global Packaging Project (GPP) has worked over the past 2.5 years to develop a set of recommended Life Cycle Indicators (which will be finalized soon) and packaging attributes. It is likely that many companies will adopt these metrics for their sustainable package metrics, and in turn the GPP environmental indicators will standardize the measurement of sustainable packaging. Their environmental indicators include both attributes and LCA impact categories. (See graph below for the first version of the GPP metrics).

In conjunction with the release of the GPP indicators, a GPP Impact Assessment Method (IAM) will be included in the PackageSmart LCA software. This will allow users to easily model their LCA toward these indicators, providing them with accurate and actionable data.