PFFC - September 2007 - (Page 43)

GREEN CONVERTING society, including the people you hire and the neighborhoods you do business in,” says Bernardo. “It’s not just good citizenship but good business—real good business.” For converters and end-users alike, the life cycle of the supply chain—from the purchase of raw materials to the disposal of packaging— has been a primary focus of sustainable operations. For example, major end-users are demanding lighter-weight packaging, which reduces shipping costs and is more easily recycled by consumers. Procter & Gamble, for one, has made reducing the size of its packaging, such as detergent containers, a priority. The change is a win-win for the company and the environment: Shipping costs are reduced and less CO2 is emitted by fewer trailers needed to ship the product. Ultimately, says Bernardo, this is just one example of how sustainability “will save you money and make you look good to your customers and to regulators.” Centuries-Old Concept Greenpak retrieves and refurbishes pallets so customers can reuse them year after year. Although the concept has been around for centuries, “sustainable development” was first defined in 1987 in The Bruntland Report, issued by the World Commission on Environment and Development, as meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Bernardo says the Iroquois Tribe implemented the concept of sustainable development centuries before North America was colonized by Europeans. “Before the Iroquois would burn a forest so they could have a meadow, they would look at it and see what impact this burning would have seven generations down the line,” Bernardo explains. “Jefferson even adopted some of their philosophies when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He would say you can’t just care about today and the heck with future generations, because that would certainly impact on their liberty and pursuit of happiness if they didn’t have the same resources available to them.” In modern-day business, Bernardo says virtually all Fortune 500 companies, and a growing number of smaller operations across all market segments, embrace the philosophy and routinely issue Corporate Social Responsibility Reports (CSRs) that describe their efforts— even though CSRs are not yet required by government agencies. Starbucks, Weyerhaeuser, HP, Xerox, and Nestlé are just a few examples of companies that most openly share the details of their sustainability efforts. Bernardo specifically cites Weyerhaeuser, an international forest products company with annual sales of $21.9 billion, as producing one WWW.PFFC-ONLINE.COM Where Recycling is a Dirty Word Recycling is at the heart of the sustainable packaging movement, which has been hailed for its efforts to bring an “environmentally conscious, life cycle approach” to the development and utilization of packaging. For one company, however, “recycle” is a dirty word. A travesty? Hardly. It’s because Greenpak Inc. is taking its efforts to save the planet one step further by making it both easy and economical for companies to reuse— rather than recycle or discard—those ubiquitous shipping pallets. “Wooden pallets were, at one time, made to be expendable after one trip,” says Jeffrey Shaver, VP of sales and marketing for Greenpak, which has been manufacturing boxes, containers, and pallets for nearly 60 years. “Everybody was happy to turn those wooden pallets and crates into mulch, but you’re better off reusing it as a pallet as often as you can. We get those formerly expendable items and bring them back and utilize them again.” To economically track and retrieve any of the one million pallets in use at thousands of companies across the country, Greenpak developed its Transportation Resource Utilization and Control System (TRUCS), a proprietary computer system that allows tracking and near real-time location monitoring of its trucking assets. It handles all scheduling of deliveries and pickups and helps to consolidate multiple, less-than-truckload pickups within a small geographic area. TRUCS also helps determine the value and status of return loads of packaging and containers, allowing for quick reprocessing and remediation of shipping materials, putting them back into use in distribution channels. To meet the standards of companies such as Dow and DuPont, Greenpak ships and retrieves the pallets, cleans and refurbishes them, then ships them back—at a reduced cost to the customer. In fact, some of those same pallets have been reused for 17 years. Shaver says Greenpak is able to do so because of its three strategically located plants, which are within a day’s drive of 70% of the US population. These facilities house more than 2.5 million sq ft of warehouse and distribution space, allowing Greenpak to store and manage packaging and product for its customers. “We’ve been able to economically and efficiently get those things back,” says Shaver. “We just do that over and over and over again.” uSupplier Infot uGreenpak Inc. | www.greenpak.com PFFC-ASAP 303 SEPTEMBER 2007 | 43 http://www.greenpak.com http://WWW.PFFC-ONLINE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of PFFC - September 2007

Table of Contents First Glance From the Editor Calendar of Events Web Lines Process Management News Clips Narrow Web & Label Reporter Narrow Web & Label What’s New Products Narrow Web Sustainability: Going Green? What's the Score with Wal-Mart's Scorecard? Straight Talk From Your Trade Associations Learn 5 Key Elements to Creating Cost-Effective and Eco-Conscious Packaging Install Energy-Efficient Light Fixtures and Reap the Environmental Benefits People, Profit, Planet: How to Balance the Impact of a Triple-bottom-line Philosophy Show Preview What’s New Products Services Directory Classified Marketplace Equipment Buyers & Sellers Advertisers Index Experience Speaks

PFFC - September 2007

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