Smurfit Kappa: Green Packaging Consortium Study

University of St. Gallen publishes comprehensive consortium study with concrete application examples, on the sustainable development of materials for packaging, the improvement of recyclability and the introduction or improvement of reusable systems. Companies such as Bosch, Tchibo, Swiss Post and packaging specialist Smurfit Kappa were involved in the study.

The environmental impact of packaging is increasingly becoming the focus of politics, business and consumers. In addition to the focus on consumer packaging, there is great potential for optimization in terms of sustainability, particularly in the area of industrial packaging - because this is indispensable in terms of protecting products along complex supply chains. In addition to the reduction of emissions, major improvements in favor of sustainability can be achieved through the use of targeted packaging materials, intelligent packaging designs, and functioning recycling or reusable systems.

The Institute for Supply Chain Management at the University of St. Gallen (ISCM-HSG) has been dealing with this topic since June 2022, together with a consortium of well-known users and producers of industrial packaging as well as logistics service providers, and has developed optimization potentials for industrial packaging on the basis of concrete use cases. Among others, the companies Hexagon Geosystems, Leica Geosystems part of Hexagon, Bosch, Swiss Post, Tchibo, xpack green logistics and Smurfit Kappa participated in the study. Concrete sustainability levers were developed on the part of these companies in the three topic clusters: alternative materials for packaging materials, improved recycling, and the introduction or improvement of reusable systems.

The overall result of the study provides guidelines for the use of sustainable packaging for industrial companies and, in this context, presents tangible evaluation criteria, success factors and risk factors that provide orientation in the selection of the optimum packaging solution. The content of the guidelines can be applied to different application environments and industries and include potential solutions in recycling and reusable systems. Extracts from material lists also help companies to gain a quick overview of suitable (alternative) packaging materials, packaging types and sustainability levers and thus condense the set of possible optimization options at an early stage.