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Deborah Sondag, marketing specialist EMEA, DuPont Protection Technologies said about the report’s findings, “The report produced a lot of impressive numbers but what do they mean in the real world? Well let me explain: saving three tonnes of CO2 is the equivalent of taking out 35 Paris-Toulouse air journeys or 25 Lands’ End to John o’ Groats flights; 77,700 megajoules of primary energy demand is the equivalent to saving the electricity use of 14 Europeans during one month and saving 823kg of solid waste equates to the monthly waste of 21 people.”
As part of DuPont’s new Tyvek® Classic Xpert Eco-Pack packaging concept, the 25 garments within the value pack are no longer individually packed, and there is just one user manual per value pack. Hence the packaging saving equates to 100 percent in terms of the polybags, and 96 percent in Instructions For Use (IFUs).
The report, entitled The Environmental Benefits of Packaging Reduction , carried out by BIO by Deloitte, quantifies and compares the environmental impact of both the existing standard and the new packaging concepts using a standardized Life Cycle Assessment approach. As a first step, a life cycle inventory is created for the individual stages involved in the production of the polybags and IFUs, their delivery to DuPont (up-stream processes), their onward transportation to customers and ultimate disposal (down-stream processes). Thereafter follows an evaluation of their environmental impact in terms of global warming potential, air acidification potential, net water consumption, primary energy demand and waste generation.
Three separate scenarios were considered for the assessment, differing in terms of number of garments shipped, shipping distance and end-of-life scenario (landfill, incineration or recycling, depending on the waste management practice of the destination country).
Deborah Sondag continues: “The new packaging also reduces water consumption by 332 baths per shipment and reduces the acidification‴ of the world’s oceans by the equivalent of 15 peoples’ electricity consumption for one month. Environmental impacts are more and more important and DuPont wants to provide its customers with clear environmental information on its improvement actions, allowing them to easily integrate the related environmental benefits within their own environmental management programmes.”
For further information on the Tyvek® Classic Xpert Eco-Pack, and its reduced environmental impact, please visit www.tyvek.co.uk/ecopack .
Published: 05-05-16
Click here for more information: www.tyvek.co.uk/ecopack
