Medical Device Link.

At last week's Medical Design & Manufacturing East and EastPack shows, sustainability was discussed more often than I expected in healthcare packaging. After all, points out Curt Larsen, a consultant with Dupont Medical Packaging and a member of PMP News's Editorial Advisory Board, ISO 11607 demands traceability for sterile medical packaging. And traceability is hard to achieve when using recycled content. Nonetheless, more than a few exhibitors and attendees at the East show reported that their healthcare product customers are asking about sustainability.

One exhibitor, Placon Corp. (Madison, WI), fields those sorts of customer inquiries all the time. While explaining Placon's approach to sustainability, Lauren Foos helped me realize why medical device manufacturers have had sustainability in mind for several years-they just didn't have a headline-grabbing term for it. For as long as I have been reporting on medical device packaging, one of the most common endeavors in package design has been downgauging.

"We take weight out of thermoforming materials when we can since raw material cost is such a high percentage of the finished tray," reported Foos, who is the firm's national sales manager, medical. "Additionally, we look at different materials to help customers meet their requirements. We have seen a trend where customers are looking for an alternative to PETG material to achieve cost reductions. Placon has offered APET in applications where that is material is appropriate. RPET has been chosen for secondary non-sterile packaging applications such as ampoule or vial packs, where the primary container provides sterility."

In the spirit of recycling content, I headed to the PMP News archives and found several articles from the late 1990s that discuss downgauging: "Flexible Packaging Materials Lose Weight" from July 1998; "Medical Tray Design: Every Detail-and Every Need-Counts" published in October 1998; and "Packaging for the Surgical Suite" from September 1998.

And here's my favorite line from "Saving Money and Resources with Film" in January 1998, one of the first columns I wrote for PMP News: "Many films are losing weight-gauge wise, that is. Either to save clients money or to save the environment, many companies are introducing very thin films for packaging applications."

These archives show that the medical device packager is truly a pioneer in sustainability. These packagers have had waste reduction in mind for nearly a decade, probably longer.

You may not be able to employ anything other than virgin materials for your primary sterile packaging, but you are still part of the sustainable packaging movement. Healthcare product packagers are just heading down a different road.

Daphne Allen
Editor