Those were issues raised last fall when the Corrugated Packaging Division of the Technical Assn. of the Paper and Pulp Industry (TAPPI) held a conference in Indianapolis. One panel included several retailers discussing their goals for food packaging in the future. General Mills’ Davide Friedman, in his End User Committee report on the session, described how Bruce Peterson of Wal-Mart and Greg Murphy of SuperValu discussed the merits of corrugated containers vs the merits of returnable plastic containers.
Retailers have an issue with personnel turnover, so ease of use becomes more important where training is involved. Both representatives at the TAPPI conference lauded the returnable container industry for first developing standard footprint sizes, and they noted the corrugated companies have followed suit.
