A recent study has confirmed the benefits of using RTP to transport goods and reduce carbon footprint, as Danilo Oliynik (below), Commercial Director of LINPAC Allibert explains...

As retailers and their suppliers look to minimise their carbon footprint, packaging has an increasingly important role to play in helping to reduce the environmental cost of transporting goods. Returnable transit packaging (RTP), in the form of plastic trays and containers, has become an established method for packaging and moving goods, ranging from delicate components through to clothes and grocery products. Indeed there are in excess of 200 million reusable plastic RTP containers servicing companies of all kinds throughout Europe today.

The popularity of RTP is down to the fact that once you have invested in a fleet you can expect to reuse it time and time again. Recognised as a real workhorse in the supply chain, the average life of a plastic container is seven years – and many last much longer.  They can then be recycled at the end of their working life, to make new from old. 

Driven by the need to be increasingly lightweight, the latest containers are designed to significantly reduce fuel costs.  Much work has also been done to minimise the size of containers when empty so that they nest or fold down to reduce the amount of space they take up in the return supply chain.

Plastic trays are available in a wide range of heights and footprints to suit the size and shape of their contents. LINPAC Allibert Maxinest trays also have dual height versions, with two or three stacked heights.  This means the user can transport loads of varying heights – thereby eliminating costly wasted space within the distribution vehicle.

Now plastic RTP has become the first product of its kind to be fully tested against the new standard PAS (Publicly Available Specification) 2050: 2008 Assessment of the Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Goods and Services. The new standard, introduced and endorsed by the Carbon Trust and its partners, is the only available benchmark for this kind of assessment. It sets a level playing field against which all companies can measure the carbon footprint of their products.

Carried out by independent environmental consultancy Sustain, the assessment measures the performance of very specific, comparable containers within specific criteria, in accordance with the requirements of PAS2050, to take account of the whole life cycle of a product.

The study looked at LINPAC Allibert’s popular Maxinest tray with bale arms, which is a standard RTP crate used for transporting fruit, vegetables and other consumable food products, along with LINPAC Allibert’s new folding tray for the supermarket sector, which folds down to the smallest height of any similar product on the market.

The findings demonstrated that the carbon footprint of LINPAC Allibert’s RTP is 67.8 per cent less than cardboard (see press release).

The findings apply to these two ranges of plastic crates manufactured in polypropylene at its plants in France, Germany, Spain and the UK – and allows for variables for each country, such as energy use. Also taken into consideration are raw materials, transport and energy used in the manufacturing process, distribution from LINPAC Allibert’s sites, and eventual disposal and recycling.

Carbon footprint (kgs of CO2/unit over five years)

The performance of the folding and Maxinest trays was compared to a standard cardboard box – FEFCO (code 0411), 600 x 400 x 180 mm, weighing 0.654 kg – used for a single trip and then collected and disposed of, or recycled after each trip.  Again it includes transport and manufacturing, raw materials and energy use.

Because plastic crates are continually re-used throughout their life, LINPAC has always believed that their environmental impact is much less than one-trip packaging.  For the first time this new standard has enabled us to put this to the test, and the results allow us to reassure our customers that plastic RTP is indeed an effective tool in enabling them to reduce their carbon footprint.

The UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80% on 1990 levels by 2050.  Any retailers who want to reduce their carbon footprint should be reassured by these findings, but it by no means we should be complacent. The findings enable us to examine in detail the potential for reducing carbon emissions still further in the future.