Sustainable Packaging

Surge in industrial activities has led to increase of GHG levels in the atmosphere which is continuously resulting into heating the earth and creating global warming and climate change. Currently, India is the third-largest emitter of CO2 in the world. The automobile sector is the second-largest contributor to the CO2 emission from fossil fuel after the power sector in India. There is pressure from various stakeholders to integrate sustainability with organizations’ operations in order to deal with climate change. The present study attempts to study barriers in implementing sustainable practices based on the firm’s characteristics in automobile industry using one-way ANOVA and Welch & Brown-Forsyth statistics. The paper also examines the impact of these practices on organization’s performance (environment, economic and operation) using multiple regression analysis. Structured questionnaire was used to conduct empirical survey and collecting responses using convenience sampling method from various companies operating in passenger vehicle and its component manufacturing companies. The study suggests that barriers in implementing sustainable logistics practices differs significantly among different characteristics of the automobile organization. It was also observed that sustainable logistics practices have positive impact on organization performances. However, characteristics of the organizations also play very important role on these performances

Recycling is a necessary element in any environmental conservation program as it takes resources from societies waste.
Glass is one of the important packaging materials that used with various products, since environmental issue promotes the demand for natural and healthy pack; glass is considered the highly suitable eco-friendly material with various possibilities.
Accumulations of wastes represent serious problem all over the world and especially in Egypt, glass could be an input. As Glass is 100% recyclable it’s a unique packaging material that can be recycled many times without any loss in quality, purity or clarity. Glass recycling reduces wastes, save energy, resources, reduces emission to air.
All kinds of glass packages bottles, jars, no matter what color, shape, texture, size, can be recycled.
The paper studies glass as an important eco- friendly packaging material, glass packaging recycling process, life cycle analysis of glass recycling ,the benefits that could be gained by establishing glass recycling system.
The objective of this paper is to make people more aware of environmental effects of recycling, and to improve the image, shared by the public, industry and government, of recycling as the good way helping the community reducing the greater and connected issues of real environmental impacts by protection and consumption reduction.
Packagers can still put their products in whatever they choose, and consumers can choose whatever they want.

Packaging-free retail and in-store refilling schemes have not been explored much from a scientific perspective and there is still uncertainty about actual environmental benefits which can be derived from in-store refilling schemes and about the market potential for a larger scale adoption of the concept.
This thesis tries therefore, to reduce such uncertainty addressing two broad hypotheses:
H.1 packaging-free retail enables to reduce significantly packaging waste and to improve the sustainability of the grocery products supply chain;
H.2 Packaging-free retail has the potential to expand on a larger scale and catch beyond a niche of consumers.
Conceptually the thesis is structured into two parts reflecting the two hypotheses, which however, are partially interrelated.
The first part explores the packaging-free retail concept, its market applications and its potential from an environmental perspective.
The second part investigates the packaging-free concept from a consumer’s perspective. Thorough review of the literature on pro-environmental consumption behaviours and on consumer’ attitudes towards packaging and packaging waste is carried out, with the purpose to gather the needed knowledge for designing a survey investigating attitudes to and consumption behaviours around packaging-free products in Italy. The survey, which is conducted by mean of an online questionnaire, is presented and the results obtained from the administration of the questionnaire on a sample of 1000 people are reported and eventually compared with findings from previous studies.
This research contributes to improve the understanding of packaging-free retail and of consumers’ response to such concept, providing support to policy makers and companies for taking well informed decisions. Furthermore, it contributes to widen the academic literature on consumers’ adoption of pro-environmental behaviours related to grocery consumption choices and packaging waste.

Packaging is an important part of our everyday life and contributes with its many qualities to our convenience. Yet, it raises many environmental concerns and is perceived as a barrier to a more sustainable lifestyle. This research aims to find out how people experience packaging within their daily lives, and uses an ethnographically inspired method to research members of three families in Southern Denmark. The observations and interviews take place during the participants’ purchase, use and disposal of packaged goods and packaging. The literature review looks at packaging, packaging design, and packaging materials. Furthermore, it discusses the ideas of sustainable packaging, reduction, reusing and recycling of materials, and sustainable lifestyles. Social science perspectives aid the discussion of discoveries about human consumption, routines and classifications. The findings show how closely interwoven packaging is with daily practices such as provisioning, household systems and waste management. They explain why the designing of sustainable packaging is so challenging, in a world, where people are so dependent on their convenience and habits.

The packaging industry is continuously evolving as medical and cosmetic companies institute change in the design, development, and manufacture of packaging systems. Cosmetic packaging is used to enhance the image of the product. The evolution of cosmetic and personal care packaging to entice the consumer to buy has now given way to a more dynamic concept: “eco-friendly” or “green packaging”. Biodegradable packaging materials, ie, ones that can be composted are finding their way into the cosmetic field. Package design should be an integral part of product development. Important design considerations are given. Product tampering is a serious issue and tamper evident features have been incorporated into newer designs. One of the risks of green packaging is the possibility of microbial contamination. Attention is given to bulk products and refill dispensers, cosmetic applicators, and closures and delivery systems. Smart packaging is also included in the design of cosmetic and pharmaceutical packaging, such designs include shelf-life monitoring, packages with built-in illumination, and tamper proof tops that discolor upon being opened. The FDA becomes involved for misbranded or adulterated products.

ÖZET
21.yüzyılda nüfusun ve buna paralel olarak talebin artması, dünyanın fiziki şartlarının kötüleşmesi ve doğal kaynaklarımızın azalması ile gıda ihtiyacımızı karşılayabilme sorunu, ülkelerin ana gündem maddelerinden olmuştur. Bu sorun, tarım ve gıda sektörlerinin geleceğinin planlanmasının önemini arttırmaktadır. Artan nüfusun beslenme ihtiyacının güvenli bir şekilde karşılanması ve gelecek nesillere yaşanılabilir bir dünya bırakılması açısından sürdürülebilir tarım ve gıda üzerine yapılan çalışmalar son yıllarda ivme kazanmıştır. Bu çalışmada, sürdürülebilir tarım, sürdürülebilir gıda ve sürdürülebilir tedarik zinciri kavramları üzerinde durulmuş, kavramlar çevresel, toplumsal ve ekonomik boyutlarıyla ayrıntılı bir biçimde açıklanmıştır. Sonraki bölümlerde ise gıda tedarik zinciri ve sürdürülebilirlik ilişkisi incelenmiş, gıda sektöründe sürdürülebilir bir tedarik zincirinin neden önemli olduğu ve nasıl olması gerektiği sorularına cevap aranmıştır. Çalışmanın amacı, gıda üretimi yapan firmaların tedarik zincirlerinde dikkat etmesi gereken hususları ifade etmek ve sürdürülebilir bir tedarik zinciri oluşturmaları sürecinde neler yapmaları gerektiğini açıklamaktır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Sürdürülebilir Gıda, Sürdürülebilir Tarım, Sürdürülebilir Tedarik Zinciri

ABSTRACT 
In 21th century,  World population and food demand are constantly increasing. At the same time, world’s physical conditions and availability of natural resources has worsened. So, countries’ main agenda topics was made of to be able to afford our food need. This problem increases the importance of planning agriculture and food sectors. In this study, it was pointed out for sustainable food and sustainable supply chain and conception was explained in details as environmentally, socially and economically. Thereinafter, relation between sustainable food and sustainable supply chain was examined and looked for the reply how important sustainable supply chain in food sector and how it should be. Aim of study is to explain what kind of facts that food producing companies should pay attention and what they should do during the period to form a sustainable supply chain.
Key Words: Sustainable Food, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Supply Chain

Care practice often relates to provoking an emotional or affective response from users, satisfying emotional needs and thus encouraging care for the product. Care practice in the process of promoting feelings of responsibility and commitment towards products, services and the environment to users also encourages sustainable behaviour. However, there is little formal interpretation of the pragmatic approach of care in the context of the design process for sustainable behaviour-essentially, how we adapt this meaning of care to the process of design for sustainable behaviour. Reuse is a form of sustainable behaviour; eliciting such behaviour requires a good understanding of forms of care that involve responsibility and commitment during the design process, as these encourage users to care about the situation and take care of objects in order to sustain their condition, or, where this is not possible, to reduce obsolescence by returning objects to manufacturers (or shops), or recycling them. This paper explores the formal role of forms of care involving responsibility and commitment in the design process. The blueprint for a design process for reuse behaviour was developed with six packaging design professionals, confirming that providing a feeling of responsibility and commitment to users should be considered at an early stage. The adapted design process was applied in two packaging reuse design studies, providing a better understanding of the role of these forms of care to designers as a means to create meaningful interaction and thus a better user-object relationship. Promoting reuse behaviour to users by considering user responsibility and commitment as an essential basis of design enables conscious decision-making and attitude change in users, triggering and motivating behaviour and subsequently enabling lasting behaviour change.

This study provides insights into young consumers' responses to sustainable labels. Drawing on signaling theory, the article studies how third-party labels (TPLs) act and interact with company-level claims, trying to better understand their impact on young consumers' perceptions and willingness to buy (pay for) a chocolate bar. A between-subjects factorial experiment-conducted by manipulating third-party sustainable labels (presence/absence of the labels) and self-declared claims (absence of the claim, formal claim, and friendly claim)-was used to test: (a) the effect of TPLs and self-declared claims on consumers' perceptions, purchase intention, and willingness to pay, (b) whether this effect was mediated through the perceived credibility of the sustainability message, and (c) what kind of tone-of-voice adopted in the company's claim was more effective. Data were collected via an online survey among a sample of 315 consumers (age range: 18-39 years) in South Italy. We found that third-party labels, "alone" were not effective in influencing consumers' perceptions and willingness to buy/pay, while a self-declared claim, especially if characterized by a formal tone of voice, had a much more relevant impact. The combination of TPLs and self-declaration affected most consumers' willingness to pay when the copy claim was informal. The perceived credibility of the sustainability message mediated the relationships between self-declared claims and the majority of the dependent variables, while, with reference to the relationship between TPLs and dependent variables, it did not act as a mediator.

Corrugated package designers are focused on balancing the need for product protection, material use efficiency and the packaging material's impact on the environment in the supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual sustainable packaging model that integrates the variables of technical design, supply chain systems and environmental factors and then use the model to identify to improve upon corrugated container design. A model was developed, from the extant literature, and a case study was performed on a corrugated container. This is believed to be a unique integrated model of most relevant agents related to the design and implementation of a corrugated box through a supply chain from design to potential post-consumer reuse. From this study, we found opportunities to improve the environmental design of the corrugated container through four ex ante design stages, and two ex post facto supply chain stages. Further, research can evaluate and refine this model via a ‘live supply chain’ for use in guiding corrugated box material selection design and reuse/recycling. Integration of the design criterion for a unit load in the supply chain creates opportunity to observe the packaging system holistically. Waste in the manufacturing process and CO2 emissions are traced along the material flow until the end of its useful life to provide an overall picture of the packaging system. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The use of long-lasting polymers as packaging materials for short lived applications is not entirely justified. Plastic packaging materials are often soiled due to foodstuffs and other biological substances , making physical recycling of these materials impractical and normally unwanted. Hence, there is an increasing demand for biodegradable packaging materials which could be easily renewable. Use of biopolymer based packaging materials allows consideration of eliminating issues such as landfilling, sorting and reprocessing through taking advantage of their unique functionality, that is compostability. Compo-sting allows disposal of biodegradable packages and is not as energy intensive compared to sorting and reprocessing for recycling, although it requires more energy than landfilling. The aim of this work was to study the degradation of three commercially available biodegradable packages made of poly (LD-lactide) (PLA) under real compost conditions and under ambient exposure by visual inspection, gel permeation chromatography, differential scanning calorimetry, and thermal gravimetric analysis. A novel technique to study the degradability of these packages and to track the degradation rate under real compost conditions was used. The packages were subjected to composting for 30 days, and the degradation of the physical properties was measured at 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 15 and 30 days. PLA packages made of 96% L-lactide exhibited lower degradation than PLA packages made of 94% L-lactide, mainly due to their highly ordered structure, therefore, higher crystallinity. The degradation rate changed as the initial crystallinity and the L-lactide content of the packages varied. Temperature, relative humidity, and pH of the compost pile played an important role in the total degradation of the packages. A first order degradation of the molecular weight as a function of time was observed for the three packages.

O presente ensaio faz parte de uma investigação para o design, através do design, em desenvolvimento no Programa Doutoral em Design da Universidade de Aveiro, com o objectivo de desenvolver propostas de embalagens não descartáveis para artefactos.
A embalagem tem servido para guardar, armazenar, proteger, preservar e transportar bens e produtos, criando um grande impacto no desenvolvimento humano.
Na sua etimologia, a palavra embalagem refere-se ao que embala, protege, cuida. Estas designações, marcadamente antropomórficas, apontam para comportamentos e instintos desde sempre ligados ao Homem como meios para a sua própria preservação e realização.
A história da evolução da embalagem mostra-nos não apenas a passagem do contentor ou recipiente para o objeto que informa/comunica/publicita, alvo de uma abordagem académica e profissional do Design, mas ainda, no decurso da massificação do consumo, uma utilização crescentemente efémera e descartável.
Na procura de soluções que garantam os propósitos originais encontram-se várias preocupações,
entre outras, o baixo custo com capacidade de reprodutibilidade e de preservação do conteúdo.
A evolução tecnológica permitiu criar novos materiais e, consequentemente, novas formas de embalar e preservar que acarretaram um aumento do consumo e do desperdício de recursos materiais com grande
e visível impacto ambiental. Graças à velocidade de consumo e à exigência de rapidez de produção, a descartabilidade da embalagem tornou-se num paradigma, até meados do século XX, pouco questionado e implícito nas nossas vidas.
A revisão da literatura permitiu-nos selecionar dois exemplos de embalagem, nomeadamente as caixas de açúcar quinhentistas e a técnica japonesa milenar de embalar chamada Furoshiki, condicionadas pela época e pela cultura em que se inserem e que agora apresentamos como fontes de inspiração para o desenho de embalagens não descartáveis.
Partimos da premissa de que a embalagem pode na sua autonomia, enquanto sujeito, e na longevidade do seu ciclo de vida, ser uma visível solução para uma maior invisibilidade do desperdício.
Ambiciona-se, assim, re-significar a embalagem como artefacto com características perenes e identidade autónoma.

This study provides insights into young consumers’ responses to sustainable labels. Drawing on signaling theory, the article studies how third-party labels (TPLs) act and interact with company-level claims, trying to better understand their impact on young consumers’ perceptions and willingness to buy (pay for) a chocolate bar. A between-subjects factorial experiment—conducted by manipulating third-party sustainable labels (presence/absence of the labels) and self-declared claims (absence of the claim, formal claim, and friendly claim)—was used to test: (a) the effect of TPLs and self-declared claims on consumers’ perceptions, purchase intention, and willingness to pay, (b) whether this effect was mediated through the perceived credibility of the sustainability message, and (c) what kind of tone-of-voice adopted in the company’s claim was more effective. Data were collected via an online survey among a sample of 315 consumers (age range: 18–39 years) in South Italy. We found that th...

Review Packaging waste accounted for 78.81 million tons or 31.6% of the total municipal solid waste (MSW) in 2003 in the USA, 56.3 million tons or 25% of the MSW in 2005 in Europe, and 3.3 million tons or 10% of the MSW in 2004 in Australia. Currently, in the USA the dominant method of packaging waste disposal is landfill, followed by recycling, incineration, and composting. Since landfill occupies valuable space and results in the generation of greenhouse gases and contaminants , recovery methods such as reuse, recycling and/or composting are encouraged as a way of reducing packaging waste disposal. Most of the common materials used in packaging (i.e., steel, aluminum, glass, paper, paperboard, plastics, and wood) can be efficiently recovered by recycling; however, if packaging materials are soiled with foods or other biological substances, physical recycling of these materials may be impractical. Therefore, composting some of these packaging materials is a promising way to reduce MSW. As biopolymers are developed and increasingly used in applications such as food, pharmaceutical, and consumer goods packaging, composting could become one of the prevailing methods for disposal of packaging waste provided that industry, governments, and consumers encourage and embrace this alternative. The main objective of this article is to provide an overview of the current situation of packaging compostability, to describe the main mechanisms that make a biopolymer compostable, to delineate the main methods to compost these biomaterials, and to explain the main standards for assessing compostability, and the current status of biopolymer labeling. Biopolymers such as polylactide and poly(hydroxybutyrate) are increasingly becoming available for use in food, medical, and consumer goods packaging applications. The main claims of these new biomaterials are that they are obtained from renewable resources and that they can be biodegraded in biological environments such as soil and compost. Although recycling could be energetically more favorable than composting for these materials, it may not be practical because of excessive sorting and cleaning requirements. Therefore, the main focus is to dispose them by composting. So far, there is no formal agreement between companies, governments and consumers as to how this packaging composting will take place; therefore, the main drivers for their use have been green marketing and pseudo-environmental consciousness related to high fuel prices. Packaging compostability could be an alternative for the disposal of biobased materials as long as

As new biodegradable polymers and their packaging applications are emerging, there is a need to address their environmental performance. In particular, there is a need to understand the time required for their complete disintegration, before these materials are deployed in commercial composting processes. Standards developed by ASTM and ISO evaluate the biodegradation of biodegradable plastic materials in simulated controlled composting conditions. However, a more detailed understanding of the biodegradation of complete packages is needed in order to have a successful composting operation. This paper investigates the biodegradation performance of polylactide (PLA) bottles under simulated composting conditions according to ASTM and ISO standards, and these results are compared with a novel method of evaluating package biodegradation in real composting conditions. Two simulated composting methods were used in this study to assess biodegradability of PLA bottles: (a) a cumulative measurement respirometric (CMR) system and (b) a gravimetric measurement respirometric (GMR) system. Both CMR and GMR systems showed similar trends of biodegradation for PLA bottles and at the end of the 58th day the mineralization was 84.270.9% and 77.8710.4%, respectively. PLA bottle biodegradation in real composting conditions was correlated to their breakdown and variation in molecular weight. Molecular weight of 4100 Da was obtained for PLA bottles in real composting conditions on the 30th day. The biodegradation observed for PLA bottles in both conditions explored in this study matches well with theoretical degradation and biodegradation mechanisms; however, biodegradation variability exists in both conditions and is discussed in this paper. r