The flexible plastic packaging we produce plays an essential role in sustainability when looking at the different stages of the supply chain. It reduces food waste, it contains, protects, and facilitates the transport of the product and significantly extends product shelf-life.
Global food waste is a persisting challenge. Flexible packaging can help decrease food spoilage and waste by providing barrier protection and extending shelf life.
Source: Flexible Packaging Association
1/3 of all food produced is disposed of before it is consumed.
Packaging accounts for about 10% of carbon footprint of product.
85%
Occurs downstream at consumer
facing businesses and homes.
A rigid PET container for laundry detergent pods emits +726% more greenhouse gases than a flexible pouch with zipper.
A HDPE bottle for motor oil packaging consumes +513% more water than a flexible pouch with fitment.
A rigid pail for cat litter packaging consumes +1,429% more fossil fuel than a flexible bag.
+31% more thermoformed tubs for baby food packaging ends up in a landfill compared to a flexible pouch with fitment.
A steel can for packaging coffee consumes +1,605% more water than a flexible pouch.
A single serve juice flexible pouch efficiently uses packaging with a product-to-package ratio of +97%.
The Flexible Packaging Association recently released a report that provides a holistic view on the sustainability benefits flexible packaging offers.
Results show that flexible packaging, when compared to other package formats, has better environmental attributes for carbon impact, fossil fuel usage, water usage, product-to-package ratio, as well as material to landfill.
Flexible packaging requires less water and energy to manufacture and transport, and it generates small quantities of greenhouse gases on its way to market, making it a sustainable packaging solution.
often equals between 15-25 truckloads of empty rigid containers
Flexible plastic packaging clearly can deliver more goods with significantly less waste, energy use, and global warming potential.
Source: Flexible Packaging Association
Ground coffee is packaged in a variety of package formats. For this Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study, the stand-up flexible pouch, steel can and plastic canister package formats were evaluated for their environmental impacts with a cradle to grave boundary.
A traditional steel can uses 16x as much water as the stand-up flexible pouch, mostly because of the material development stage.
The HDPE plastic canister consumes 2x as much water as the stand-up flexible pouch.
The HDPE canister and steel can respectively emit 4x and 7x more GHG emissions than the flexible pouch.
A steel can and HDPE canister respectively use 453% and 518% more fossil fuel than a stand-up flexible pouch.
According to the U.S. EPA Waste Hierarchy, the most preferred method for waste management is source reduction and reuse. High product-to-package ratios associated with flexible packaging enable packaging efficiency.
Source: Flexible Packaging Association
Three common packaging formats for cat litter were evaluated for this Life Cycle Assessment study: a flexible stand-up bag, a paperboard barrier carton and a rigid plastic pail with handle. All formats meet the criteria for strength and moisture protection.
Paper manufacturing requires significant amounts of water in the paper forming process.
The barrier carton has a water consumption impact 3,573% more than that of the flexible stand-up bag. The rigid pail has a water footprint 1,370% higher than the flexible stand-up bag.
Compared to the flexible stand-up bag’s greenhouse gas emissions, the barrier carton produces 331% more while the rigid pail emits 996% more emissions.
The barrier carton and rigid pail respectively use 69.6% and 1,429% more fossil fuel in manufacturing than the flexible stand-up bag.
The stand-up bag offers a higher product-to-package ratio compared to the barrier carton and rigid pail formats.
