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Analyze this

Yogurt producer Stonyfield Farm analyzes its ‘package delivery systems’ to determine environmental impact.

Nancy Hirshberg, vice president of natural resources, Stonyfield Farm.
Nancy Hirshberg, vice president of natural resources, Stonyfield Farm.

When a consumer buys Stonyfield Farm’s yo-gurt, it’s understandable if she or he believes the cup is the package.

But the real “package” includes a liner or overcap, possibly a folding carton, a corrugated shipping case, and stretch wrap.

Then there’s all the machinery necessary to manufacture the various materials, and the equipment to fill, close, case-pack, palletize, and stretch wrap the containers. That consumes energy. Furthermore, oil and gas are needed to deliver pallets of the refrigerated products to the market. Stonyfield Farm analyzes these materials and energy usage to help determine the environmental impact of its packaging.

“We call this our package delivery system, or PDS,” explains Nancy Hirshberg, vice president of natural resources for the Londonderry, NH-based firm.

“The PDS consists of primary and secondary packaging, and the transportation links required to deliver the packaging and products,” she says. It also includes package making and converting.

‘Go (Michigan) Blue’

Since its inception in 1983, Stonyfield Farm has worked to live up to its mission statements, one of which is “to serve as a model [to show] that environmentally and socially responsible businesses can also be profitable.” For years, the company has worked with various organizations and invested money in studies to determine the environmental effects of not just its packaging, but its entire business operation. About two years ago, the yogurt maker hired a consulting firm to evaluate its business to determine where its processes were most detrimental to the environment. What were the results?

“The study slammed us in the face. It determined that our packaging was our single-greatest [environmental detriment],” Hirshberg recalls. “It was clear that we needed to do something to reduce the environmental burden associated with our packaging.”

The results seem somewhat surprising given the company’s efforts to produce “environmentally friendly” packaging. For example, the company has worked to lightweight its yogurt cups and paperboard, incorporated post-consumer board for multipacks, and used natural dyes for printing. But based on the results of that study, the Londonderry firm enlisted the services of the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems (Ann Arbor, MI).

The first study was completed last year. That study, Hirshberg explains, “looked at a life-cycle analysis of our packaging, and also helped give us direction on what we can do to try to reduce the environmental burden of our packaging.”

The study compared the company’s current injection-molded polypropylene cups to four alternative systems:

• High-density

polyethylene cups

• Thermoformed cups

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