Green Packaging: Lightweighting: Not for Cartons?
There usually isn’t a lot of wiggle room when it comes to a carton’s weight. The greenest solution would be to completely eliminate secondary packaging. Sometimes this is not possible, however, because a carton often serves to protect a product, makes the product easier to merchandise on store shelves, and provides space for required labeling information.
“Lightweighting applies very little when it comes to cartons,” says George Filippidis, vice president, Ares Printing & Packaging (New York City). “Going down by just one point size doesn’t dramatically save on costs or amount of materials,” he says. (A paperboard’s thickness, or caliper, is measured in point sizes.)
Often, making a carton greener actually requires adding weight. The majority of the paperboard used for cartons for beauty products fluctuates between 18 and 24 points in thickness, explains Mitchell Kaneff, president and CEO, Arkay Packaging (New York City). “When you’re using recycled materials, you actually have to move up to a higher-caliper board to get the same strength you would with virgin board,” he says.
Another reason why lightweighting a carton can be problematic is the fact that paper mills have standard calipers for boards. “When you request an unusual size, the mill has to produce it as if it’s a custom order. The more popular sizes will cost less,” says Kaneff.
Shipping tests and drop tests are important when determining what a carton’s weight should be. “If your product is light, you may be able to go a little lighter on the carton. If it’s a heavy product, then you will need to keep that rigidity and strength,” Kaneff says.
The one area in which lightweighting can make sense for paperboard is in the corrugated cartons used for shipping. “When you’re talking about corrugated shipping containers, you can usually change to a slightly different gauge to save a little bit on the cost of shipping, but you still need to make sure that your product is protected all the way to its final destination,” Kaneff advises.
Filippidis advises using corrugated and microflute in place of injection- and vacuum-molded inserts in shipping containers. This might require more recycled fibers to be added to a shipping carton to make sure that it’s strong enough without plastic inserts, but Filippidis feels that it’s still a better solution. “If you make a shipping box thinner, then you’ll need plastic supports inside—and that’s not very environmentally friendly,” he says.
The final verdict: “At the end of the day, it’s most important that both the secondary carton and the shipping carton be strong enough to protect the product,” says Kaneff.
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