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Hello my packaging and sustainability friends!

I sound like a broken record but again, I apologize for not blogging this week; please forgive me!

I have been super busy with creating new marketing materials and restructuring our advertising mix on greenerpackage.com. Check out our new and improved Design for Sustainability white paper here: http://www.greenerpackage.com/corporate_strategy.

And my fabulous Recycling Report here: http://www.greenerpackage.com/blisters_clamshells and here http://www.greenerpackage.com/recycling.

And guess what: PlasticsNews is going to publish my recycling report in the “perspective” section. Look out for it in print in the next 3-4 weeks.

Oh and for all you Packaging World E-newsletter subscribers, look out for our Recycling Report in the August New Issue Alert, scheduled to go out tomorrow! My ad man told me that pictures of people generate more interest (and therefore clicks and leads), so I include the picture of me giving the thumbs-up sign in my ghost buster suit in the garbage during our first waste audit (the one before I got all sweaty and sad). Ha! Good times…

I don’t know if I told you guys but when Dordan was exhibiting at the Walmart Expo I met a gentleman from SupplierHub, which is this online education exchange for private packaging buyers and sellers for Walmart. Anyway he was super nice and I got him hooked on my blog (Hello if your reading this!) and now we are advertising on this site! Go Dordan!

Advertising excuses aside, the main reason I haven’t been blogging is because I have been passed the Pack Expo baton, which means I am coordinating the show for the first time ever. I was totally freaking out because I just inherited this project and I thought the due date for submitting all the order forms was August 17^th but its SEPTEMBER 17^th, phew! So now I can relax and resume my blogging!

Ok, enough random embellishments for the day, let’s talk sustainability!

We are going to begin construction on our composter next Tuesday, yippee! I sent an email to the woman who is helping us (also the farmer who is going to use our land to grow organics for the Woodstock community), asking if we needed to begin collecting our food waste. If so, we have real motivation to begin educating our employees about source separation; that is, segregating out the food waste from the food packaging waste, garbage, and recyclables.

As an aside, we just got in some new bio-based material to sample, which is certified “OK to home compost.” This material is unique in that it exceeds the standard 120 degrees F heat deformation temperature currently dominating the market AND can break down in ANY disposal environment, besides landfill. If this is “true,” then this is crazy cool as one of my biggest concerns with biodegradable plastic packaging is that it often doesn’t make it to its intended disposal environment, which is usually an industrial composting facility (D6400 Standard for Industrial Composting). ANYWAY I’m excited to play mad scientist and test the performance of this new material’s biodegradation by tossing it our soon to be erected compost pile. While I will not be able to determine if it completely biodegrades (no plastic particulates available after 90-180 days) because I don’t have insanely microscopic eyeballs, I will be able to determine if it breaks down until no longer visible. By conducting a test of this material’s biodegradability in our compost pile, I will be more comfortable adding it to the reservoir of resins Dordan offers our customers and prospects. So that’s pretty cool…

In regard to my work with our community schools:

I met with the co-chair of the Environmental Task Force for Woodstock School District 200 yesterday. He was super duper nice and I liked him right away! The ETF, he explained, is this organization of administrative folk, including school principals, and two student representatives, who discuss and implement different sustainability initiatives at the schools. One project they are working on this fall is an energy contest, whereby the D200 schools compete to see which one can reduce their energy use the most. They envision having this big thermometer, of sorts, which shows how much energy they have used per week compared with the previous school year. Sounds neato!

The co-chair of the ETF was also interested in having me talk about the field of sustainability as a profession in hopes of generating more interest in environmental sciences. I think this is great! I can’t believe I may be one of these people that comes into schools on “career day;” how funny!

As the meeting came to an end, I provided him with a couple suggestions for how I thought my work could enhance the goals of the ETF. I offered COMPASS tutorials so students could be introduced to life cycle analysis as a methodology for assessing the sustainability of a product or service; recycling education; and, a discussion on environmental advertising and manipulative and misinformed advertising claims. I still remember taking a class in high school called Rhetorical Analysis of Media, which introduced for the first time the idea that I was being marketed to as a consumer and encouraged an awareness and analysis of said media. It was such a cool class and I would love the opportunity to encourage this kind of reflection among students in the sphere of environmental marketing claims, as so many are, in my opinion, flirting with that fine line between reality and greenwashing. In a nut shell, I am really excited to get involved with D200 schools and help spread the love of all things sustainable!

Talk tomorrow!

Hello world! Again, I apologize for my lack of blogging this week. I just thought I would let the recycling report marinate for a bit…

Anyway, guess what happened yesterday: the Metra train that I take from Chicago to the office everyday HIT and TOTALED a car at the Des Plains stop. It was totally crazy!

Read the press release here:

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/Car-Bursts-into-Flames-Driver-Killed-After-Train-Collision-99950479.html.

Ironically, and not to get all metaphysical or anything, but as one soul left this world, another came in. Check out this article about how a pregnant woman gave birth in the traffic caused by the Metra accident:

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/baby-delivery-firefighters-birth-train-accident-metra-100021949.html.

Weird bears. And, totally unrelated but worth mentioning, they are filming Transformers literally a block from my house—I got to see the transformer trucks and everything!

Okay, enough personal embellishments for the day.

Hello and happy Friday! Oh boy do I have a treat for you!

As some of my more diligent followers know, I have not been blogging about my work on recycling thermoforms because of other marketing obligations. That being said, it just so happens that I got to kill two birds with one stone: I was given the task of writing my very own white paper on the state of recycling clamshells and blisters in America for our outgoing marketing piece for August! How cool is that! It took a lot of work, but to be honest, once I started, it sort of just flowed out of me. Perhaps researching issues around recycling thermoforms for almost a year allowed for the easy transmission of information. This report is probably the most technical piece I have ever written, aside from my senior thesis on our secular age, capitalism, and the Frankfurt school. If anyone is interested, let me know, only two people have ever read this masterpiece; my professor and myself! Ha!

So yea, I am pretty proud of this report because it summarizes why thermoforms are not really recycled in America and what we as an industry can do to change it. While I intend on presenting this report to different publications for further exposure in addition to putting it on our website and using it for our marketing, I thought I would share it with you, my packaging and sustainability friends, first! There are some tweaks I still intend on making, and I would love any feedback you can surmise! Also, we still need to put the bells and whistles on it so it looks like a “real” white paper.

Again, this recycling report is a compilation of my research on recycling with suggestions for our industry.

Check it out!!! Oh, and I apologize but all the footnotes can only be displayed as end notes...

 

Hello my packaging and sustainability friends! I do apologize for my lack of blogging last week! I wish I could tell you that my excuse was that I was on vacation, but I wasn’t; instead, I was working with Dordan’s web designer on the restructuring of our sustainability information as with the introduction of our new initiatives, we had to create new space. This, consequentially, resulted in me re-writing a lot of our sustainability web content, which always takes a lot of brain power!

In addition, several posts back I described how Dordan was brainstorming on a logo that would represent our new sustainability efforts. We wanted something that was a diversion from the traditional Dordan aesthetic (bold colors, hard lines, emphasis on technology and engineering), because our sustainability efforts are so warm and fuzzy, which thermoforming isn’t, traditionally. Ha. Anyway, a lot of other companies have their “green team” or “green squad” or whatever, which indicates to their customers and the public what the company they represent is doing in terms of “sustainability.” Because we didn’t want to join the bandwagon but wanted to convey that Dordan was actually doing something—a lot actually—in the way of sustainability initiatives, we thought that a logo that branded our actions would be super cool!

After brainstorming internally with nothing to show for it, we turned to a local Woodstockian artist—Gabriel Karagianis—who is AMAZING. Check out his work here: http://www.gabrielshorn.org/

Obviously ahistorical and abstract paintings don’t scream sustainability or corporate branding, so I was a little unsure of what he would produce. Luckily I didn’t have to wait long before he created an awesome concept, which I will soon unveil to you, my loyal packaging and sustainability friends. And to be a tease, it’s really, really, really cool and may in fact provoke us to alter that traditional Dordan aesthetic all together…more to come!

So yeah, busy bee in terms of marketing.

Shall we discuss the results of Dordan’s first waste audit, now that I have been given over a week to recover?

Ok, our first waste audit was illuminating for several reasons, which is why I encourage every company to conduct there own. What I discovered was that the majority of materials we were sending to landfill were of the same “type.”

Check out the excel spread sheet here, which I created to help calculate the results of the audit; please note: I removed the quantities of material landfilled for proprietary considerations. Sorry Charlie!

And by the by, the whole copy and paste of spreadsheet into blog did not go very well-- all the materials have been cut off and now I cant delete it! Weird bears. Sorry for the eye soar.

Location: Dordan's central dumpster
Date: 7/15/2010
Tub weight: 5 Lbs.
Unit of measure: Lbs.
	Corrugate	Heavy brown paper	Wood scrap	Dirty plastic scrap	Green/white plastic strapping	Plastic film/shrink wrap	Metal strapping?	Misc. paper	Misc. plastic	Food and food packaging?	Paper towels?
Tub 1
Tub 2
Tub 3
Tub 4
Tub 5
Tub 6
Tub 7
Tub 8
Tub 9
Tub 10
Tub 11
Tub 12
Tub 13
Tub 14
Tub 15
Tub 16
Tub 17
Tub 18
Tub 19
Tub 20
Tub 21
Tub 22
Tub 23
Tub 24
Tub 25
Tub 26
Tub 27
Tub 28
Tub 29
Tub 30
Tub 31
Tub 32
Tub 33
Tub 34
Tub 35
Tub 36
Tub 37
Tub 38
TOTAL:

While the weights have been excluded, consider the following assumptions:

• Post-industrial corrugate composed the largest category by weight of landfilled materials;
• Post-industrial “dirty” scrap composed the second largest category by weight of landfilled materials. While Dordan is proud to grind most of its scrap for recycling, there is some scrap that falls on the ground or gets mixed up with other resins that could be a contaminate if added to the regrind material. Like most post-industrial/consumer materials, our scrap regrind has to meet certain specs, depending on who is buying it for reprocessing; therefore, we have to maintain that the our scrap is clean and uncontaminated prior to selling it to a plastics remanufacturer. Get it?
• Wood scrap composed the third largest category by weight of landfilled materials;
• Heavy brown paper composed the forth largest category by weight of landfilled materials;
• Paper towels composed the fifth largest category by weight of landfilled materials;
• Flexible plastic packaging i.e. shrink wrap composed the six largest category by weight of landfilled materials;
• Followed by: Metal strapping, plastic strapping, food waste, misc. paper and plastic waste.

I approached our CEO with the results of the audit, with a plan in mind. I was hoping (so, so very much), that prior to conducting the next audit, we could implement some sorting techniques via our employees, which would make my job A LOT easier. After all, the gross part only happened during the audit of the wet waste, which didn’t go very well, as I freaked out and weighed everything together, thereby compromising the integrity of the data. Because I was told that prior to purchasing a composter one had to determine how much “compostables” one generates, I thought it was very important to perform a legitimate audit of this material. And because all the food waste was commingled with the office paper and bathroom waste, I couldn’t generate reliable data. I will follow up with this thread in a bit…

Anyway, I sat down across the desk from our CEO, results in hand. I took a deep breath, and began:

“As you know, I performed our first waste audit last week.”

“And how did it go,” he inquired?

“Good…gross, but good…” I stuttered but quickly resumed.

“Unfortunately, I was unable to get a good reading of our food waste generation because nature’s process had begun and it was impossible to separate the food from the paper towel waste, among other things.”

“Ok…?”

“So I was hoping that we could maybe begin teaching our employees to segregate out their food waste from their food packaging waste in the cafeteria. Perhaps we could have like 4 bins: 1 for food waste, 1 for food packaging waste, one for recyclables i.e. aluminum cans, and one for misc. garbage that doesn’t fall into the above categories. This way we can really see how much we generate in order to select the most appropriate composter…

“Ok…that’s a possibility…but what about the waste generated from our factory,” he continued?

“Well, by far we throw away more corrugate than any other material; however, the tonnage isn’t that great. It may therefore be difficult to find a buyer, but again, I feel as though we need to perform more audits in order to establish a baseline upon which to assess our average material generation per week, month, etc.”

“Ok…?”

“So if we intend on conducting more audits, I think the goal would be to get really good data. In other words, in order to find a buyer, I assume we have to guarantee a certain amount of material per some time frame. Prior to engaging in said talks, we need to really know how much of this material we generate. Therefore, I suggest beginning to train our employees of the factory to segregate out the different industrial waste into different receptacles. Perhaps we could have one for corrugate ONLY; one for plastic scrap ONLY; etc. That way, performing our next audit would be much easier: we would only have to weigh the receptacle and subtract out the weight of said receptacle, which means no more dumpster diving!”

He looked as though he was pontificating…

“Would this be something you and the plant manager would consider” I continued?

“I don’t see why not,” he replied.

After that he instructed me to do some more research, and tell him what I wanted; he would then determine if such an approach was feasible and if so, I could begin implementing it. WOHOOOOOOO!

Oh man, I have to go!

I am so sorry to do this to you but I have to suspend blogging until I have finished the ad content for Dordan’s August New Issue Alert! I am writing a white paper on recycling thermoforms, which is super technical, and as such, requires me to work very hard for the next several days as the content is due August 1^st! I will be a crazy person until then; wish me luck.

Tune in next week to learn more about achieving zero-waste, see our new sustainability logo, and much much more.

YAY packaging and sustainability!

WOW. I don’t even know where to begin.

Consider this a “how-to” perform a waste audit post; however, as the narrative unfolds, perhaps it will be interpreted more as a “how-to-NOT” perform a waste audit. UG!

Ok, yesterday I attempted to conduct Dordan’s first “waste audit.” To recap, the point of conducting a waste audit is to determine exactly what kind of waste your company generates in order to start outlining an action plan for achieving zero-waste. Because we are looking to reach zero-waste, we obviously need to know what kind of waste we generate in order to find a way to recycle it, reuse it, or switch it to a more recyclable material. Ya dig?

And to recap my recap, this all started with Dordan’s CEO saying he wanted to get a composter. In my last post I explained how in search for the “right” composter I learned that I needed to figure out how much “compostables” we generate in order to determine the kind and size of composter we should buy. After all, there are like a million different kinds of composters with different volume requirements and what not. Therefore, I came to the wonderful conclusion that we needed to conduct a waste audit.

Not to tout my own horn or anything, but I consider myself a pretty tough cookie; that’s why the idea of single-handedly jumping into our central dumpster and pulling out the different material types to weigh didn’t really intimidate me. After all, as long as I had gloves and a mask and other protective gear, it should be a piece of cake, right?

I approached yesterday full of optimism. Thanks to the helpful insight of my network, I had compiled all the necessary “tools” to perform my waste audit:

I had a scale, capable of weighing material up to 250 lbs;



My trusty pen and pad of paper, to write down the various materials and corresponding weights;



My pretty pink tub that would hold the different material types thereby allowing me to weigh said material;



And, a funny marshmallow suit, super duper gloves and a face mask. Look, I am positively pumped!



Around 10:30 yesterday, after taking an early lunch of a hot dog with everything, a cheeseburger with everything, a fry and coke (I knew I would be exerting myself and therefore wanted to consume the most nutritious meal I could envision), I approach Dordan’s central dumpster, ready to dumpster dive.

This is what I had to work with:



After lowering myself into the rather full dumpster (trash pick up comes twice a week; therefore, I waited until it was its fullest prior to pick up so I could get the most accurate data), I began sifting through our waste.

To start, it wasn’t all that bad. Most of the stuff in the dumpster was industrial waste, like cardboard, dirty plastic scrap that we can’t recycle, plastic strapping, metal bits from whatever, plastic rejects, heavy brown paper, etc.

See, here's a bin full of wood-scrap, not scary at all:



Here I am still looking rather optimistic, with a bin full of plastic film to weigh:



As the time past, however, and I kept…

Jumping in the dumpster;

Throwing the desirable material type out of the dumpster;

Climbing out of the dumpster, which got increasingly difficult based on the ever-declining volume in the dumpster;

Binning” the desired material in my pink bin;

Weighing the bin;

Throwing the contents of the bin into another bin so as not to throw the material back into the central dumpster, whose bottom I was determined to find;

And; doing it all over again with other materials…

It got really, really, really, really hot. I don’t think I can stress how hot it was—no air conditioning, a ninety degree day, direct sun, stinky garbage, plastic suit, latex gloves under heavy-duty gloves, and constantly jumping in and out and in and out and I think you get the picture. If not, I have conveniently included one below!



After 5 hours of this (literally, I am not exaggerating) I realized that the end of the day was fast approaching and I had not even gotten to Dordan’s wet waste i.e. food waste, bathroom waste and office waste. Luckily this waste was bagged prior to being tossed in the central dumpster so it was easy to isolate this waste from the more “industrial waste,” described above. Due to the ever-impinging time constrains and my desperate need for a shower prior to sitting on the Metra for an hour and a half, I decided, with the input of our office manager, to put our un-weighed “wet waste” in our now empty garbage cans to be dealt with tomorrow (which is now, today). We stashed these wet waste bins in an air conditioned room in the plant so as to attempt to preserve their “freshness.”

The next day, which is conveniently, today, I got suited up again, with the hopes of going through our wet waste in order to determine how much of it is food waste, office paper, paper towels, etc.

I pulled the wet waste garbage bins from the air conditioned room in the factory. I re-collected all my auditing “tools” i.e. scale, bin, etc. I laid down a tarp, (which was really plastic bags tapped to the floor), and began ripping open the various bags. See:



And another glam-shot:



This is the wet waste after emptying on the tarp:



While it may look harmless, it was actually super duper duper gross: there were maggots, flies, other creepy-crawlers, super gross smells, soiled everything, and whatever: trash. Enough said?



I started to panic/have a minor breakdown. I quickly started lumping the paper towel waste with the food waste (it was impossible to segregate; everything was soiled with everything else), which conveniently contained a ton of maggots, and throwing them in the not-so-pretty-anymore pink bin, to attempt to weigh.

My attempt to weigh a wet waste bin...cleary no segregation of materials:



This lasted for about a half an hour until I realized that this was not going to generate accurate data because everything was commingled past the point of recognition. After getting as good of a reading as I could without vomiting all over myself, I threw everything back onto the makeshift tarp, took up the corners, and threw in the central dumpster. This, however, did not go as smoothly as I envisioned, with some wet waste spilling onto the factory floor in front of the dumpster.

After that I did the I-got-ants-in-my-pants dance back to the office, where I jumped into our un-heated shower.

SO GROSS.



So this is what all my misery can now teach you, my packaging and sustainability friends about how-to-conduct your first waste audit.

Try NOT to conduct a waste audit on a super hot day.

Have someone HELP you. I envision my non-existent assistant standing outside of the dumpster, collecting the material I throw out, weighing it, and moving it to another bin. That way I wouldn’t have to keep jumping in and out and in and out again.

Get a bigger bin to weigh the desired materials in (I spent a lot of time breaking the corrugate down to a size I could stuff in the bin).

Get a ladder to place in the dumpster to allow you to climb out of, if no assistant is available.

Get a REAL tarp; not plastic bags tapped together and to the floor.

Try not to sweat all over your notes; it makes the ink run and your data confused.

Have water handy.

And, if possible, prior to conducting your first waste audit, have your employees SEPARATE their food waste from their food packaging and their paper towel waste for at least a week. This way, it won’t all become this solid mass of grossness keeping you from getting an accurate reading of the food waste versus paper towel waste versus food packaging waste.

Ok, I feel as though I have vented a bit and can resume being a normal person. People are right, writing is a good release!

Tune in tomorrow to learn what I do with the results of our first waste audit.

Hello my packaging and sustainability friends! This is officially my 50 ^th blog post! Hurray for dedication to all things sustainable packaging!

Happy Monday Funday! I hope everyone had a nice weekend and one full of relaxation!

As most industry-folk know, the Global Packaging Project released its “A Global Language for Packaging and Sustainability: A framework and a measurement system for our industry” a week ago-ish, which discusses, as the title implies, a global metric for assessing the sustainability of a given package or packaging system. Pack World’s/Greenerpackage.com’s Anne Marie Mohan provides a good summary of the project here with the report(s) available for download: http://www.greenerpackage.com/metrics_standards_and_lca/gpp_releases_global_framework_measurement_system_sustainability.

As Mohan explains, the GPP looks to create a GLOBAL metric for quantifying the “sustainability” of a package/packaging system. While the Walmart Scorecard and the SPC’s Metrics for Sustainable Packaging exist in isolation, this project looks to be the over-arching governance on sustainable packaging metrics, absorbing the work of both the SPC and Walmart. From what I believe, if a new metric wishes to be added to the Walmart Scorecard, it must first be presented to the GPP for consideration and validation.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of “sustainable packaging metrics,” a “metric” can be understood as an “attribute” that a given package or packaging system has in the context of the environment from a life cycle approach. For instance, packaging weight could be a metric taken into consideration when trying to quantify the environmental profile of a given package, as is the case with the SPC’s COMPASS packaging life cycle assessment modeling software and the Walmart Scorecard (packaging weight informs the energy required to transport the product/package throughout the supply chain and consequentially impacts GHG emissions, fossil fuel consumption, etc.)

Unlike the Scorecard and COMPASS, however, this global set of metrics takes into account social and economic indicators, in addition to the environmental ones; in my opinion, this integration makes the GPP’s approach to assessing packaging sustainability a much more holistic and therefore efficient tool than those currently in use.

Taken together, the GPP proposes 52 metrics that need to be recognized in the discussion around issues pertaining to packaging and sustainability. 52, isn’t that wonderful!!!

And here are some of my favorites:

Environmental—chain of custody: This questions if the production/cultivation of the feedstock (cellulous vs. fossil fuel) is done so “sustainably.” Think Forest Stewardship Council…AWSOME!

Environmental—water used from stressed sources: This metric questions where the water comes from that facilitates the production/cultivation of the packaging feedstock. Check out the Global Water Tool, based on several independent sources, which provides a global water scarcity mapping function for the identification of production activities occurring in stressed or scarce watersheds:

http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?type=p&MenuId=MTUxNQ&doOpen=1&ClickMenu=LeftMenu=LeftMenu

There's this, too:

http://www.ifu.ethz.ch/staff/stpfiste/index_EN

Economic—packaged product wastage: this metric questions the value of packaged product lost due to packaging failure. I like this one because it is so simple; it reaffirms the number one function of packaging, which is, to protect the product. In a time when “smaller product to package ratio”, “material reduction” and “downgauging” has become, for the most part, our industries’ approach to “sustainability,” it is nice to be reminded of the necessity for excess…

Social—community investment: This metric questions the role a corporation plays in its community. Because Corporate Social Responsibility reports are so in vogue, it’s nice to see that such efforts will be quantified with this assessment, hopefully influencing purchasing decisions.

For the other 49 metrics, check out the report here:

http://globalpackaging.mycgforum.com/allfiles/TCGF_Packaging_Sustainability_Indicators__Metrics_Framework_1.0.pdf

Ok folks, that’s all I got for today. I am researching how to perform a waste audit so we can determine what type of composter would be the most appropriate for Dordan’s food and yard waste generation. Details to come!

Greetings!

I know I said I was going to have a juicy email for you today about all things composting BUT I just got done with Dodan’s “Story to Sustainability,” which I wish to share with you. I intend on submitting it to some of my colleagues in the publishing world to see if it would resonate with their readers/subscribers; if so, perhaps we could get some coverage. Let’s say HURRAY for free press!

Granted it is a little cheesy and I definitely tout my own horn a bit, I think it still helps to convey our understanding of sustainability, which sets us aside from our competition.

The part that gets good is after the “this brings us up to present day” section because it discusses how “sustainability” for us is an ever-evolving concept that draws on much more than marketing claims but an integrated approach to a constructed ethos. Sounds heady, huh?

Enjoy!