Carbon footprint is one of the most abused terms in our industry: professor Narayan

The recently held International Packaging Conclave couldn’t have incorporated better elements for discussions than the need to integrate, collaborate, and ideate but without straying away from sustainability.

Professor Ramani Narayan of Michigan State University stepped on the tail of a contentious issue with his keynote speech as he pressed for a different definition of carbon footprint. “The theme of the conclave is sustainability, and when we talk about sustainability, one of the most abused terms has been ‘carbon footprint’. Beware of misleading and deceptive biodegradability claims that several companies make. Biobased plastic does not mean it is biodegradable and biodegradable plastic does not mean it is biobased. If something is too good to be true, perhaps it's not true,” he said.

A carbon footprint has historically been defined as the total set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an organisation, event, product or person. Professor Narayan, however, drew a line of differentiation between material carbon footprint and process carbon footprint of a product. Taking the delegates back to classrooms, he said, “When you talk about carbon footprint of a product, it is important to analyse two prime elements of it: Where did the carbon come from and what happens after the product usage.”

Elaborating on the value proposition for biobased products, he said, “It is time to switch from petro/fossil carbon feedstock to biomass feedstocks. We need to use biodegradability as an end-of-life option to remove single-use short life disposable plastics/products from the environmental compartment completely and in a safe and efficacious manner via microbial assimilation (microbial food chain). Degradable or partially biodegradable should not be any more acceptable; either be full or nothing.”

A similar presentation was made by professor Narayan for USDA Biopreferred Public meeting in January 2010, where he had said that the rate and time scales of CO2 utilisation in nature is in balance with bio/renewable feedstocks (1-10 years) as opposed to using fossil feedstocks (106 years).

The first panel discussion post the keynote speech switched the point of focus from sustainability to benefits of integration and collaboration across the packaging value chain. The panel was moderated by Sameer Mahendale, associate vice president – packaging development, Kraft Foods. The panel consisted of Bimal Lakhotia, national head – packaging development and commercialisation, Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages; Prabhuddha Dasgupta, consultant, ITW India; Karam Vir Rehani, KVR Consultants; Umesh Padmasali, AGM – OEM marketing, Schneider Electric.

Mehendale kicked-off the discussion by asking panellists “why is integration missing from the industry when we all agree that it is important?”  The panel equivocally expressed that it was the lack of a proper brief and a formal forum for discussions between supplier, OEMs and manufacturers that has posed as a hurdle to robust integration process.

“There is need for integration and collaboration. It is both strategic need and operational need.

The objective of integration is to create the three words: seamless, synchronised and inclusive value chain,” said Likhotia. “The solution lies in asking the right questions and providing a brief with clarity of thought,” he added.  Veteran packaging consultant, Dasgupta couldn’t have agreed more. He said, “One thing I have always missed is a clearly written brief. People believe that writing a brief is difficult. The truth is that the only components that form a clearly written brief are: What, how, when, what and how much?”

Rehani felt the onus of the issue lies with partners with lesser understanding of packaging technology making prominent decisions concerning packaging of products in companies. “The market demands changes frequently. Several times, there are finance guys selling the idea of cost-cutting to higher-ups by claiming that reducing the grammage of the packaging paper would bring down the cost of packaging. However, they never wonder how this would affect the efficiency of packaging machine.” Through his presentation, Rehani also pinpointed the need to focus on line efficiency than the machine efficiency.

Padmassali felt that creation of an open forum to discuss such issues would help decimating few of such issues. “There are several magazines which are covering the topics and they will be the best forums. Challenges are part of the game but in the end, product should be the main focus. Somewhere down the line, OEMs have to understand the need and integrate.”

Rehani felt that the primary reason why OEMs turn away from the subject of integration, even though, it might be in their favour is because they fear losing intellectual property rights to their competitors.

This string of discussion was later taken up in the second panel discussion of the day, which debated if open technology could be the answer to this issue as well as the future demands of automation for packaging lines.

The panel was chaired adeptly by Anup Wadhwa, director, Automation Industry Association (AIA). The panellists for this session were Bryan Griffen, electrical and automation engineering manager, Nestle and chairman, OMAC Packaging Workgroup (OPW); Maurizio Tarozzi, global technology manager for packaging solutions, B&R; Satish Ansingkar, vice president – sales, B&R Industrial Automation; and Mahabaleshwara BL, senior manager – E&A, Nestle India.

Taking up the issue for discussion Wadhwa said, “It is difficult to collaborate with people, but easier with machines,” and threw the house open for deliberating on open standards, and the risk and rewards associated with it.

“One of the issues in automation earlier was that there was no connection between machines. Every machine was talking to the system via a separate network. The solution is to embrace and deploy industry software standards. It is imperative to establish a standard platform of templates,” said Ansingkar.

“We are talking a lot to future technologists. As automation provider, the challenge is to go out of the way and provide you acentralised system,” said Tarozzi. Later, through a presentation, he explained how Open Safety protocol could pitch in the situation to render one safety standard protocol for your entire plan. He recognised that the lack of a common, machine-to-machine safety protocol reduces the value of having an integrated line. A unified, hardware-independent and legally open safety protocol such as Open Safety on the other hand reduces line integration efforts while increasing overall line safety as well as overall equipment effectiveness.

Mahabaleshwara echoed the views and said, “If we can't put our all machines to talk to each other, we would never be able to churn out the best product process.” Further, he explained how Nestle has benefited from aligning with Organization for Machine Automation and Control (OMAC) and the open source technology.

Griffen took over the subject in details by explaining the concepts of PackML software. “PackML, which stands for Packaging Machine Language, defines a common approach, or machine language, for automated machines. The primary goals are to encourage a common "look and feel" across a plant floor and to enable and encourage industry innovation. PackML was adopted as part of the ISA88 industry standard in August 2008. In addition, it doesn’t require the manufacturers to compromise their intellectual property and works simply on the basis of Packtags.”

The last session of the conclave bordered on the sustainable business practices. Chaired by Rakesh Shah, managing director, Windmoller & Holster India, the discussion was more of an open forum discussion with the delegates. The panel comprised of professor Ramani Narayan; Dr. UK Saroop, vice president, Reliance Industries; Dr. AK Ghosh, professor, IIT Delhi; Sukhdev Singh Saini, senior manager – packaging development, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare; and Vijay Bhujle, head, Intertek Expert Services India.

Telling the different side of the story to the earlier keynote speech by Professor Narayan, Saroop elaborated on the various benefits that have been possible because of the technical innovations in masterbatches. “Contrary to the popular belief that plastics are anti-sustainability, I feel plastics are silently helping several sustainability moves across the globe. One of the key points for sustainability is conservation. There are several examples where plastics have reduced the weight of packaging up to 80% or more. ”

Professor Ghosh refocused on an underlying concern surrounding sustainability— how we can quantify and index sustainability. “We in India have not yet geared ourselves to a sustainable tomorrow; not at least to the level of satisfaction of environment conservationists.”   He added that Life Cycle Assessment for analyzing the carbon footprint from a material is not an end but a welcome step in the process of quantifying sustainability.

Saini asserted that for sustainability to gain a major thrust it is necessary for manufacturers to find economic benefits of adopting such measures. “Brands need to understand that customers find it more interesting when you share facts about how sustainable your product is in terms of number of trees saved or planted instead of telling them that you cut-down on x number of CO2emission.”

Bhujle agreeing to the views of Saini and professor Ghosh added that when we talk of Life Cycle Assessment, it is important to ascertain if it is a measure from cradle to gate or cradle to grave. “If you do a LCA of a product packaged using polypropylene, you will see that the carbon footprint because of packaging lies between 5-15%, whereas the other stages together share the rest of the pie. However, this doesn’t mean that we do not continue to innovate to reduce the carbon footprint.”

Recently, Apple has shown interest in wirelessly powering and charging its portable devices, allowing products like the iPhone and iPad to be powered up while sealed in packaging and on display at a retail store. The proposed invention aims to replace the typical labels and other advertising that is found on the outside of product packaging. Instead, Apple's method would let the product sell itself. In addition, there were rumours of the company bringing in a sustainable packaging that would dissolve when immersed in warm water.

When the panel was questioned if it foresees such a trend being implemented in India, Professor Narayan said, “Innovations are taking place all over the world but for those to be implemented here in India requires an impetus from the government. Until the government of India makes stringent measures to enforce sustainability measures, it is highly unlikely that we would see a suo-moto action in the short-term from the corporate sector; especially, because there are no monetary benefits attached to them.

A majority of print buyers present at the conclave too agreed with professor Narayan’s view and said that it is still not economically viable to have such packaging innovations at the Indian market.