PACK EXPO: Dross and Gold in Las Vegas

I spent the first day here wondering if I had made a mistake. The two presentations I attended were only peripherally of interest to our entrepreneurship project despite their appealing titles (The Hidden Sustainability Benefits of Plastic Packaging and Sustainable Packaging: Reducing the Carbon Footprint). I must be learning something here at BGI because these seemed very 101 and I left disappointed.

The floor of the tradeshow was not much better. About 10% of the companies exhibiting displayed "Green" signage, indicating they were sustainable in some way. Two of these companies had large Suess-like packaging machines that spewed out foil pouches with some kind of product inside, which the booth attendants continuously scooped up by the armload and deposited into the overflowing garbage bin across the aisle. Another booth displaying its "Green" logo seemd so impossible to square with the idea of sustainability that I actually asked the attendant what made his company sustainable, exactly. After several moments of blank stare, he sputtered that they had been in business for over 40 years. "And?" I asked. "... and... we are family owned!" "And...?" " And we are self-financed. We don't borrow money from the bank!" That was it, their sum total of claim to sustainable practices. Clearly the packaging industry has a big opportunity for improving their understanding of what constitutes "sustainable" in any meaningful way.

Today was much better, and I think it was not only because my post-Intensive cold is improving. Both presentations were excellent (How Reusable Packaging Contributes to a Sustainable Packaging Strategy, and Protecting Novel Packaging form the Competition). I spoke with Bob Klimko, Chairman of the Reusable Packaging Association (RPA) after his presentation. Bob is also Director of Marketing and Sustainability for Orbis (see http://www.orbiscorporation.com/). After I explained who I was, what I was doing at the conference, and the very basic outlines of our project, he said he would make arrangements for our team to be able to access the huge data mine in the RPA website without paying the expensive annual membership dues. Big coup! He also said he would be happy to come out to see us to talk to us about our ideas. And to speak at BGI if that could work out. He seemed kind of excited about the Sustainable MBA thing. There is an LCA white paper coming out in a week or so via the RPA website with a lot of LCA data that we can use.

 I learned much about patents and intellectual property rights as they will apply to our project, and feel a greater sense of clarity that we may need to apply for a patent before the year is over. Talked with two different companies that might be able to subcontract with us to manufacture our product, and had some more questions answered that will help us in the design process.

Confirmed that ISO 14040 is the LCA standard that will apply to our project. In a study conducted for Orbis in 2004, The Franklin Association found that in comparing single-use display-ready corrugated cardboard vs. reusable plastic boxes, there was:

o 39% less energy used

o 95% less total solid waste

o 29% less GHG created

Finally, the upcoming California producer responsibility legislation will nudge companies toward looking for solutions like RRRepeat's.
 
The events of the day made the trip worth my various investments. Las Vegas is probably my least-favorite city anywhere, but today I found what I was looking for: enough gold to indicate that we are searching in the right vein.