Henning Weigand-Packaging has to be boring

"Who says packaging has to be boring? As a digital marketer, I'm thrilled to see more and more brands considering the entire lifecycle of their packaging. From eco-friendly materials to post-use considerations, let's get creative and think outside of the box (or packaging)!" 🌍🌳  By Henning Weigand

#sustainability #packaginginnovation #digitalmarketing

Henning Weigand

"🌍🌿 Exciting news! Setting KPI for sustainable packaging just got even better. By taking into account both the CO² footprint in production and what happens to the pack after its use, we can make a real impact on our planet. Let's make sustainability our top priority and make a difference together! By Henning Weigand

#sustainablepackaging #ecofriendly #makeadifference #savetheplanet"

Guiding principles of Reduce, Reuse & Recycle-Henning Weigand

To truly achieve sustainability in the packaging industry, it is important to follow the guiding principles of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. While these principles are critical to minimizing waste and preserving our planet, it's important to remember that they are only the beginning. We must move beyond simply reducing, reusing, and recycling to create a true circular economy where waste is eliminated altogether. By adopting innovative approaches such as closed-loop systems and designing products for their entire life-cycle, we can maximize the benefits of the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra while striving for a world where waste does not exist. By Henning Weigand

What goes into producing the pack-Henning Weigand

What goes into producing the pack. This perspective is mainly Carbon footprint related (which includes in a circular model the Carbon footprint for collection, return logistics, processing, cleaning in a Reuse and the additional mechanical or chemical recycling process in a Recycle model.

Click here to read the article https://henning-weigand-yahoo.blogspot.com/2021/01/how-plastics-waste-could-become-such.html

Carbon and Plastic Waste -Henning Weigand

 

Although sustainability seems clear and straightforward on the first look, it can in many cases mean different things, depending on the focus. Therefore it is important to make ourselves clear, what the main thing is, which we want to achieve: Do we want to have the lowest possible Carbon footprint or do we want to have the least possible plastics waste or something else. Of course, in the ideal case we minimize both, Carbon and Plastic Waste – the two objectives in many cases are a tradeoff to one another. To me, a KPI therefore in the ideal case focuses not on one, but on 2 separate perspectives, both of which matter.

Click here to read the article https://henning-weigand-yahoo.blogspot.com/2021/01/how-plastics-waste-could-become-such.html

Creating sustainable packaging is not just a goal-Henning Weigand

 

"Creating sustainable packaging is not just a goal, it's a necessity! And we are thrilled to take

on the challenge of defining SMART targets and KPIs to measure our progress. Let's make a

positive impact on our planet, one packaging at a time! 🌍🌿 #SustainabilityInPackaging

#SMARTtargets #KPIs"

Click here to read the article https://henning-weigand-yahoo.blogspot.com/2021/01/how-plastics-waste-could-become-such.html

Anticipate the end use when you design the pack-Henning Weigand

In stories #19 and #20 I have set the focus on how to correctly apply the Reduce Reuse Recycle guiding principles in sustainable Packaging and how to set the Key Performance Indicators, ensuring that both perspectives, the CO² going into producing the pack and the waste – especially plastics waste – coming out after the pack need to be looked at in combination.

There is not one solution that resolves all: Packaging fulfills important reasons: for food, pharmaceutical products, for  for example it keeps things clean, hygienic, protects from bacteria/viruses, extends the best before date for food and with that reduces the end to end carbon footprint, it protects the environment from toxic chemicals which are required to produce batteries for electric vehicles, solar panels and medicine. Just imagine all these hundreds of millions of face masks, which were used, wrapped in plastics and thrown away through the pandemic in recent years. My impression is, that the recycling rate of those is close to zero. Referring this back to Packaging, it is important to note, that different materials and pack designs have different advantages and challenges from a sustainability perspective. As laid out in my previous stories, I differentiate between three main materials, which are plastics, paper and steel/metal. Whilst Metal and Paper have a high CO² footprint in their production process, but are slightly less problematic from a landfill/river/ocean waste perspective than plastics, Plastics in a linear economy has a slightly lower initial carbon footprint, but is a major challenge to rivers and oceans, as it disperses into microplastics and can stay in the environment for thousands of years.

Therefore, preview / anticipate closely what the key sustainability goal is, that you want to achieve, when you create your pack (best case you avoid a pack completely): Use the right material going in, use the right amount of material going in, think beyond a one-time use and make it circular for multiple rounds of reuse and ultimately recycling. For this designing it the right way is key: Circularity requires an end to end approach and thinking beyond single use, from the start including what happens to the pack after its use.

To summarize: Best case we do not need Packaging and can avoid it, but often that is not possible, and then many aspects need to be considered from the material used, to the amount of material going in all the way to thinking it from the end of use – what happens to the pack after it has been used. Henning Weigand