NEWS
Environmentally sound packaging and practices as well as choosing appropriate testing for qualifying transport packaging shared top billing at the Dimensions .07 International Forum on Transport Packaging held in Orlando, FL, earlier this year
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Amy Zettlemoyer
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Brian Wallin
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Alan Crawford
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Speaker presentations were heavily attended, befitting the growing interest in transport package trends that were addressed at the conference. One obvious theme was the issue of sustainable packaging, which kicked off day one with Wal-Mart’s Amy Zettlemoyer, Sam’s Club, director of packaging. Zettlemoyer described the broad scope of Wal-Mart goals and “early wins” in areas including improved energy efficiency in store operations and less-wasteful transportation practices. Wal-Mart’s plans include a 25% reduction in solid waste in three years as well as aligning the supply chain around sustainable product innovations.
Of most interest to many in attendance was Zettlemoyer’s description of Wal-Mart’s packaging scorecard for measuring suppliers’ progress toward achieving the “7 Rs” Wal-Mart has used to define sustainable practices.
One veteran attendee was heard saying that the sustainability issue rears its head every year. But this is clearly an issue that is gaining steam. Several more presentations were devoted to the topic. Bob Sanders, corporate packaging engineer, senior technical staff member, IBM, spoke on the importance of evaluating the total environmental impact of activities.
“The crystal ball is bursting with evidence that the bar will continue to be raised in order to minimize the adverse environmental effects of our modern society and technologies. This will result in considerable in novation and new materials,” said Sanders.
“On the other hand, there are many [environment-targeted] activities and trends that appear to conflict with these positive trends, and in fact they may scuttle our ability to achieve higher levels of environmental performance,” he said.
Sanders noted that “proper packaging can help to prevent a lot more waste than it causes [by ensuring, for example], product protection in transit, reduced theft and pilferage, and reduced spoilage.”
Sanders described the growing body of regulations in the United States and abroad.
EU Directive 94/62/EC requires member states to improve recovery and recycling rates of waste packaging materials, rewarding the use of renewable resources.
Besides the EU’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, which sets limits on certain elements, a Chinese RoHS kicked off March 1, 2007. “Curiously, the new China RoHS does not restrict hazardous substances in packaging, only the products,” he said.
The electronics industry faces initiatives such as with an EPEAT program aimed at standardizing “green procurement practices.” A European REACH directive starting June 2007 will require the registration of thousands of substances in product and packaging. Sanders said that IBM treats optional requirements as mandatory, believing they will become mandatory.
How might this onslaught of regulations affect medical device packaging? Conference attendee Curt Larsen, a consultant with DuPont Medical Packaging and a member of PMP News’s Editorial Advisory Board, says that recycled materials might be suitable for secondary packaging elements such as labels, inserts, cushioning, and containers. But primary sterile packages require the use of virgin stock.
“You can’t use recycled resins or Tyvek. We must know the history of all the materials in our sterile packages, which pretty much disallows the use of any recycled materials,” Larsen says.
Larsen notes that codified requirements include FDA regulations stipulating safe and effective packaging, and ISO 11607-1 clause 5.1.5, which speaks to materials used in preformed sterile barrier systems.
Clause 5.1.5 says, in part, that “the source, history, and traceability of all materials, especially recycled materials, shall be known and controlled to ensure that the finished product will consistently meet the requirements.” The standard indicates that it is unlikely that anything other than virgin materials will provide sufficient controls to support safe package development.
Speakers focused on the value of established ISTA and ASTM package testing protocols, and of collecting distribution environment data for performing simulated lab testing. Different approaches were highlighted by Brian Wallin, an engineer at Amgen (Thousand Oaks, CA), and Alan Crawford, principal packaging engineer, medical nutritional products, Ross Products division, Abbott Labs (Columbus, OH).
Amgen performed field data collection on trucks and in airplanes to develop vibration and temperature profiles to assist in package development for liquid-suspended protein drug products shipped in insulated containers. “We began four years ago developing new profiles in order to ensure compliance and more importantly to serve our patients. To defend our packaging with regulators, we wanted to develop profiles based on our own measured data. The goal is to simulate in the lab as close as possible our real-world shipment environment,” said Wallin.
Amgen found that its airplane data “were not consistent with prior profiles and validated why Amgen must collect its own data. Engineers need to do their due diligence to understand where industry profiles come from, what they mean, and how they apply to their business,” Wallin said.
Amgen senior engineer Ray Cowland reported on Amgen’s development of heat and cold profiles for qualifying shippers for global distribution, which resulted in major savings from reduced instances of nonperforming and returned product. “Qualifying shippers to the thermal profiles allowed Amgen to use the same insulated shippers for shipping to different locations, since the ambient profiles used cover the limits of heat and cold exposure that the package is expected to encounter,” said Cowland.
Ross Products used a combination of methods in testing primary, secondary, and transport packaging for an 8-oz screw-top plastic container for the Ensure nutritional drink that replaced a nonreclosable can. After the new packaging launch in 2003, a second project phase aimed at cost improvement. Two optional box-style packages were evaluated for performance with stress testing.
Crawford said that testing methods chosen needed to ensure speed-tomarket, besides minimal risk of package failure. “The challenge when changing to a new package is to manage the risks. The new package and the subsequent cost-improved package had to maintain acceptable package integrity and acceptable appearance at point of sale,” Crawford said.
Ross Products employed ISTA tests (3E, 3F, 3A) in an Abbott simulation lab. “Laboratory tests may not exactly duplicate the distribution environment, but the results are generally good enough to aid in decision making,” he said.
In the phase-two box redesign, a corrugated tray with a shrink-film overwrap and a wraparound box with RSC economy end flaps made from a lightweight (32 ECT) corrugated were evaluated through accelerated simulated stacking-stress analysis by Stress Engineering Services (Mason, OH). Abbott chose the RSC end-flap design—where the box provided only modest compression support—as it could be more quickly executed with modification of existing case packers. Package costs were reduced in excess of $1 million, with no reports of increased damage.
To summarize, Crawford emphasized these points: Understand the distribution environment and that it is dynamic; test to simulate the environment; ISTA methods include accelerated tests for objective assessment that minimize risks; and additional accelerated test methods and outside help are available.
