A report prepared for the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2013

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Jay Edwards | November 2012 | jay.edwards@pack2sustain.com
Introduction / Background
Pack2Sustain is a technical services firm that works with organizations to optimize packaging systems.
There are two main aspects to this optimization work: the first involves technology scoping within the
global packaging material, equipment, and design industries to establish best practices for a given
application; the second involves the use of life-cycle analysis metrics to articulate and quantify
environmental performance.
Environmental performance is one of the three pillars of Sustainability; the other two address Economic
performance and Social performance. Packaging impacts Sustainability across all three of these areas,
and also plays a significant role in the advancement of Public Health. This report will illustrate and
discuss these impacts.
Packaging’s Role
Packaging can seem routine – even trivial – but its impacts on global society are significant. In the United
States alone, the U.S. Department of Commerce reports that the economic value of the packaging
industry is approximately $200 billion, or about 2% of U.S. GDP. The United States Census Bureau also
states that over 750,000 people are employed in the U.S. Packaging industry - examples of the relevant
stakeholders include product manufacturers, material suppliers, logistics personnel and retailers.
(Economic data source: American Institute for Packaging and the Environment; AMERIPEN)
One aspect of the packaging industry worth noting is that jobs in the sector build skills that can often be
readily transferred between employers or amongst functional areas within a given organization.
Packaging sits at the crossroads of product safety, design, marketing, sales and distribution decisions –
as a result, those who are successful in the field develop the ability to address considerations from a
broad and inclusive perspective.
Sustainability & Public Health:
The Role of Packaging

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The social role of packaging has perhaps the strongest tie to public health. The delivery of crucial
medical supplies and food require packaging that is designed to withstand the stresses of distribution
with its contents intact. Packaging can also make healthy foods more accessible. A 2012 study at
Michigan State University explored the role that canned fruits and vegetables play in American diets,
and found the following (source: Progressive Grocer):
The significance of microbiological contamination is underscored when we consider the listeria outbreak
traced back to Colorado-grown fresh cantaloupes in 2011. As stated in the Associated Press, September
28, 2011 article concerning the outbreak, listeria can be consumed by healthy adults without incident
but it can kill the elderly or those with weaker immune systems. Pregnant women are also at risk
because listeria passes easily to the fetus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide
guidance concerning how to properly handle and store cantaloupes to avoid exposure to listeria, and
also speak to use of mass-produced canned products as a way to avoid this exposure. (The CDC language
explicitly mentions canned meat spreads and fish products, but not fruit products.)
While some of the benefits of mass-produced canned products are well known, there are public health
concerns tied to the use of cans that are less well-defined. Bisphenol A or BPA is commonly used in the
linings of food and beverage cans, and in hard plastic bottles. Once ingested, BPA appears to alter
thyroid hormones, specifically those hormones that guide pre-and postnatal growth and brain
development. These changes were noted specifically in pregnant women and newborn boys according
to a 2012 UC Berkeley study, although the research team pointed to the need for further study to
understand BPA’s affects (source: SFGate ). The UC Berkeley study was the first to explore BPA’s
influence on thyroid hormones in pregnant women.
 Canning can be a safer option for produce, due
in part to the canning process which creates a
barrier to microbiological contamination
 Canned produce is not subject to seasonality or
refrigerated requirements, making it more
easily accessible
 Canned foods can deliver savings up to 50% vs.
frozen and 20% vs. fresh

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Some of the specific findings from the UC Berkeley study show the complexity of the BPA / thyroid
hormone interaction:
 Pregnant women with relatively higher levels of BPA in their urine had less of a thyroid hormone
called thyroxine in their blood
o A smaller part of the hormone that is known to affect the fetus' growth was not linked to
the mother's BPA levels
 Newborn boys whose mothers had higher levels of BPA when pregnant showed signs of an
overactive thyroid.
o Newborn girls did not show the same signs, however. One explanation for the gender
difference may lie in studies that show female rats clear BPA more efficiently from their
bodies than male rats
About 2.4 billion pounds of BPA were produced in the U.S. in 2007, and about 90 percent of Americans
have traces of BPA in their urine. In July of 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned BPA
from baby bottles and sippy cups, which the industry had voluntarily done for years in response to
growing health concerns. (SFGate)
Another aspect of packaging’s social role involves serving as an impediment to product counterfeiting.
This crime poses extraordinary risk, particularly when it targets pharmaceutical products. According to
PharmaManufacturing, the World Health Organization estimates the size of the global trade in
counterfeit drugs to be $119 billion, and is expected to grow at 13% per year. It is also estimated
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that 1% of all prescribed drugs in the developed world – and
30% in parts of the developing world – may be fake. This is
especially striking given the CDC’s 2010 report on
prescription drug trends, which showed the following:
 Over the last 10 years, the percentage of Americans
who took at least one prescription drug in the
previous month increased from 44% to 48%. The use
of two or more drugs increased from 25% to 31%.
The use of five or more drugs increased from 6% to
11%.
 In 2007-2008, 1 out of every 5 children and 9 out of
10 older Americans reported using at least one
prescription drug in the previous month.
 The most commonly used types of drugs included:
asthma medicines for children, central nervous
system stimulants for adolescents, antidepressants
for middle-aged adults, and cholesterol-lowering
drugs for older Americans.

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Fortunately, a potent arsenal of packaging options exists to frustrate would-be counterfeiters.
PharmaManufacturing discusses two approaches: the use of overt packaging technologies and the use
of covert technologies, both of which are summarized as follows.
Overt technologies do not require expert knowledge, and allow for immediate authentication of
packaging through visual inspection. Examples of such technologies are:
 Holography, which may feature an image of the manufacturer’s logo and may also include
nanotext or hidden images for second- or third-level protection. In general high-security
holograms cannot be reproduced using conventional printing methods, and features like
nanotex may be visible only through a magnifier.
 Color-shift inks, which appear as two or more colors depending on the viewing angle. The
process used to produce color-shift pigment is highly specialized, and its supply is tightly
controlled and involves strict code-of-conduct and end-use agreements.
Covert technologies provide an even higher level of protection as they are invisible and are difficult to
detect and replicate without specialist equipment and expertise. Examples of covert technologies are:
 UV inks and print, which can be used to create an image on a given package that is only visible
under a given frequency of UV light. Not only is access to these inks and pigments limited, but
their end-use is restricted. In addition, if complex photographic images are produced, highly
specialized printing techniques are required.
 Microtext print, an approach that generates characters that cannot be seen by the naked eye
and can be hidden in larger overt images. This technology requires specific and uncommon
equipment, materials and expertise – and like UV inks microtext can elude the notice of
counterfeiters who then fail to copy the relevant features.
PharmaManufacturing lastly speaks to the use of security tear tape, a physical impediment to package
access that makes it virtually impossible to open a given pack without damaging the pack surface. This
damage can be engineered to leave behind a void / tampered message on the package to alert the
inspector or consumer.
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The environmental role of packaging can perhaps most simply be stated as stewardship. The
manufacture of product ingredients and components – and the transportation, production and use of
the products from which these components are made - is often environmentally intensive. Packaging’s
most important role is to protect the environmental investment represented by the products they
contain. This is ideally achieved by using packaging materials that are renewable, that are made using
renewable energy, and which can serve as a useful input into a subsequent process once the product
has been consumed or used. All of this must be done with elegance so that only a sufficient amount of
material is used and so that the consumer is drawn to the package and finds it enjoyable to use.

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A study conducted by the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (INCPEN) provides a
telling example of the environmental investment made in a product.
A cheese product was modeled in the study, and it’s interesting to note that although packaging only
accounts for 5% of the total energy-use and emission impacts associated with the production, delivery
and use of the cheese, failure of the package would likely result in the loss of most if not all of the
resource investments. Such losses can – and do – multiply quickly when taken across entire industries or
regions. The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in an August 2012 issue paper, looks at such
losses across the supply chain. When we consider only the life of a product after it is placed into a
package, we see losses of up to 10% during packaging (for grain products), 12% in distribution and retail
(for fruits and vegetables) and up to 33% after the product reaches the consumer (for seafood). The
consumer loss figure includes consumption away from home.

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Exploring consumer waste further, AMERIPEN (AMERIPEN) discusses home preparation of salads in its
document “Discover the Hidden Value of Packaging”. Traditional salads, made from individual vege-
Methane gas contributes to global warming to a degree that is 25 times more potent than carbon
dioxide over a 100-year timeframe (source: Methane). There is mounting evidence that global warming
contributes to more intense global storm activity, the likes of which we have most recently and tragically
seen with Superstorm Sandy and its impacts on much of the U.S. East Coast. To be clear, landfill
methane may only be one of a number of contributing factors to the ongoing shift in global storm
patterns, but the public health impacts of such storms are certainly significant.
A final example shows packaging as a positive environmental actor in the context of pet waste.
In this instance, packaging is itself the product, and it provides a key technical enabler to improve both
environmental and public health.
Conclusion
Packaging materials and components play important roles in the area of Sustainability and the area of
Public Health – as barriers to contamination, impediments to fraud and stewards of resource
investments. Future best practices in packaging will be marked by engagement amongst the entire value
chain, from product design to material sourcing to distribution to consumer use. The future in this space
will belong to effective integration and collaboration. For more, please visit Pack2Sustain.com.
tables that are cleaned and cut at home, can often
result in waste since the entire vegetable(s) are
seldom used or consumed. Alternatively, prepared
salads only include the edible portions of the salad
ingredients, and allow for the inedible portions to be
used constructively as animal feed. This can be
particularly important, since discarded food from
consumers’ homes – edible to humans or not -
produces methane gas as it degrades in some landfills.
Packaging film can be made to biodegrade in either
terrestrial or aquatic environments, and such a design
approach was taken for the Flush Doggy brand of pet waste
bags. According to the company’s web site (Flush Doggy):
 America’s 71 million dogs produce 29,000 tons of
waste daily, consuming nearly 4% of all landfill space
 Dog waste is a major source of fresh water
contamination
 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states
that flushing pet waste is the best disposal method