Assessment tools are emerging

You can’t fix what you can’t measure. Packaged goods companies should be encouraged to know that sustainability assessment tools are beginning to surface.

Pw 6795 Sust Pkg Coalition Logo Copy

One of the key aspects of sustainability is the need to assess the ramifications of decisions about sourcing, design, and logistics. That’s because sustainable packaging is not simply about the package, but also about the context of the package.

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition and IBM are developing tools that will help in these sometimes complex assessments. Exploring how the tools work says a lot about the interrelatedness of package, process, and environment.

A COMPASS for
sustainable packaging design

As the packaging industry has recognized the strategic need for incorporating sustainability considerations, the Sustainable Packaging CoalitionSM (SPC)—an industry working group with more than 170 member companies along the supply chain—seeks to respond to the need for practical, credible guidance. This fall, the SPC will release COMPASSSM (Comparative Packaging Assessment), a tool that allows packaging designers and engineers to compare the human and environmental impacts of designs. COMPASS will be released in beta version to SPC members in the fall and will be available to all through a modest licensing fee in the winter of 2009. Visit www.design-compass.org for more information.

After surveying the often competing and confusing conversations about sustainable packaging decisions, the SPC approached the development of the COMPASS assessment tool with three guiding principles:

• Sustainability requires a life cycle perspective
• The packaging industry needs common, transparent metrics for sustainability
• Design is a critical leverage point

The project began in 2005 when, at the request of its member companies, the SPC began investigating a variety of U.S. and European packaging and product design tools that use metrics to assess environmental performance. Through that process the SPC identified a package design tool called MERGE™, developed in the mid-1990s by Environmental Defense Fund. “The SPC was granted an exclusive license by Environmental Defense Fund to redevelop the tool, which we did with the generous support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” says Martha Leflar, senior project manager of the SPC, a project of the nonprofit institute GreenBlueSM.

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