Key Points
The environment is more than CO2 calculations it's about a mix of gases, as well as water and land use. Over the long term, materials and choices must be measured against each other on a specific basis, for example within plastics there is a wide variation.
Not all plastics are the same, for example PP is about half the CO2 equivalents than PS, this represent an issue for the Music Industry but must be seen as positive for the film and games industry. We have therefore retooled and changed our latest generation of trays into PP.
Plastics are sustainable with solutions like BioPlastic PLA, but it makes little environmental and economic sense at the moment, particularly when taking into account water usage and the social costs of high food costs for the poor. Plastics only account for 4% of the world's oil, and an increasing amount is being made up through recycling. In a world of shortage it would make more economic sense to use oil for plastic than to run cars, which have alternatives of hydrogen and other forms of electricity.
Amaray Cases are made up of 100% PP, and are easy to recycle with minimum reprocessing. PP is the most marketable and flexible of plastics, providing many after markets for recycling. The benefits of recycling are clear in the case of PP, and would result in saving about 90% of energy, similar to aluminium (95%). We would therefore very much like to take the Aluminium beverage can model and apply it to the world of DVD cases.
The Amaray Red Tag case also removes the need for source tagging with EAS (electronic article surveillance ) labels, this label add their own significant environmental footprint, whilst causing contamination in the recycling chain. This is currently making recycling projects difficult in some countries, e.g. the US. The Red Tag solution removes this containment issue, whilst giving real physical security with both the lowest economic and environmental cost, through its resuse.
Bioplastics face the additional problems that they are not recyclable and are seen as a contaminating the recycling stream, though they do have the advantage of being Biodegradable. However this benefit can be had with the Amaray BioBox, at lower economic and environmental cost.
Introduction
What is the environment? Land, Water, Air, in short it's a subject as big as the plant and just as complex. Currently the industry is focused on C02 emissions, as seemingly a quick measure, the more sophisticated are moving to C02 equivalents a method that scales up certain gases because its judged they do corresponding more damage. This seems fair and gives a more balanced approach, but rarely reflects that Chinese products for the same specification will be much more damaging due to less efficient power plant, use of sulphuric coal and the energy wastage due to long inefficient power grids. We therefore end up generalising and count the extra CO2 emission of shipping from China, but make the much bigger mistake of assuming their efficiency is similar to European plant.
Similarly Water usage as an issue seems to be largely ignored as an issue but is an increasingly urgent problem, and its not just a developing world issue, it's a rich world issue as well the Murry river in Australia and Colorado in the United States are barely reaching the sea, as their flow falls to a trickle. Indeed Water rather than oil is forecast to provide the sparks for War by various pundits and journals including the Economist. Paper and board requires large volumes, and from a plastic perspective so does BioPlastic , most of the Corn based PLA's, take up to 4000 litres of water per kg of material, at the same time their have been accusations of land being set aside for this, driving up food prices for the poor. Indeed land usage itself, and what it should be used for is another huge issue that is yet to be confronted, with growing pollutions, whose needs and wants are developing as the developing nations emerge and grow their economies.
With the growing of corn one needs to take into account, the energy for tractors, irrigation, fertilisers, and then the converting and proceedings of the material into useful stuff. The energy for this is substantial, and for a replacement of PLA (BioPlastic) against PET or Polystyrene (material of the Jewel case) it may make sense, but not as a replacement for Polypropylene (the material which DVD cases are made from) as this would result in 50% more emissions. We are not therefore recommending this approach to customers, though we will continue to research it and follow progress.
The BioPlastic approach however does ward of criticism of sustainability, and conjures up nice images of crops swaying in the breeze, but it probably makes more sense to use oil for plastics than anything else. Currently 4% of oil use goes towards plastic products, this is not the big cause something it, and secondly in cases of shortage it would be better to keep plastic production and replace fuel oil with electricity made from other sources. The economic value and befits of plastic are clear and the valuable resource can be retained for use over and over again through recycling. Unlike paper it does not have a limit, or suffers from shortened fibres.
And the economic and energy impact are much greater and some of them are hard to replace. Indeed it can be argued that if oil is an issue, it should be used for plastic rather than.
The Amaray Approach
As a company we are committed to the EU directives and the policy espoused by WRAP the UK government organisation, which is focused on the 3 R's, Reduce, Reuse and Recycled and we believe we are the only company in the media space truly committed to this philosophy. Let me explain why.
Reduce
If we take the first R – Reduce. We have reduced case weights from 82g 10 years ago to 57g today. We are now planning to reduce the material in a case by about 15% over the next two years. This has involved a new design and taking material out where we do not need and compensating in other areas where we do need strength with some reinforcement. The result is a case that looks and performs like our standard case, but is 15% lighter. We have chosen not to make a case that looks like a collinder as consumers perceive this has cheap and nasty cost saving. Whilst cost saving may be an important aspect to business as well that does not mean you should rub the consumers nose in it. After all this is packaging of dreams and entertainment, and the chance to escape from the current world.
With the introduction of BioBox we have made an Amaray case biodegradable, this reduces the impact on the environment and significantly reduces landfill volume, should a case end up in landfill rather than being recycled. Additional befits are reducing management issues and helping to return the land to other uses more quickly. It should be noted that Landfill capacity is a key issue in many European countries and cities, and this problem is likely to get worse. Critically Amaray BioBoxes can still be recycled in the normal way and do not act as contaminant; unlike alternative approaches (the process needs bacteria and a certain concentration levels.
Reuse
On Reuse we perspective we very much focus on Red Tag. This a multi use product for the securing of media products whilst on sale in retail. An RFID version also exists for both retail and supply chain applications, with better performance and more benefits than label alternatives. Using Red Tag also means the avoidance of safers/keepers that are often 200g of polycarbonate and steel, which also increase out of stock situations and reduce impulse buying/sales.
Recycling
For some time Amaray has struggled with the issue of recycling, yet when we designed the case all those years back it was clear that the one material approach, including the inlay film would make recycling easy and simple. As a company we are committed to helping the Film and Games industry recycle old cases into new cases wherever supply chain management processes are in place that insure contaminates are not introduced into the system.
A Warning of Supply Chain Management Impact on Recycling
As material prices started to climb we looked at using recycled plastic, but found the quality of product available was variable. Yet some of our competition had already gone down this route and we feared being left behind, so we tested (using the testing house SATRA) a range of back cases in Germany. Black cases being the colour of choice for hiding issues, which were therefore more likely to be made with recycled plastics. The results were shocking, a quarter failed EU regulations let alone some of the more demanding customer specifications, this therefore led us to back off. What we would save in material costs would be more than made up in test costs (a lot of materials). We made some presentations to companies within the industry, who were relaxed about it, and off course thought, it was not them, when two instances their product had been found not to be complying.
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