Redefining Packaging Craftsmanship: Greenpac's Circular Economy Approach
Chika Imakita
CEO
Greenpac
How does Greenpac incorporate circular economy principles to minimise waste and enhance sustainability in its packaging solutions?
As Greenpac focuses on packaging for sensitive and high-value equipment, we see ourselves as craftsmen and not commodity producers. We take great pride in the quality of our packaging, and innovation of our design. We focus on designing packaging to be smaller, lighter and to minimise material use – creating carbon, material and cost efficiencies for customers while still meeting rigorous performance requirements.
For one customer using a metal lifting kit with their crate, we reused the wood off-cuts to create the lifting kit without any additional material. This led to three circularity outcomes: facilitating the recycling of the lifting kit, eliminating the need for metal use, and reducing the waste from the crate production.
We employ our patented nail-free design to design fully collapsible crates that can be easily re-assembled, and pallets that can be easily recycled even in strict recycling jurisdictions like Japan.
More than half of our manufacturing operations are powered by solar energy, reducing the overall carbon footprint of every crate and box we produce. We do in-house repair and rework for used crates and pallets and repurpose off-cuts of wood to make pallet blocks. We have also designed returnable solutions to be used between equipment manufacturing locations and our Greenpac facility.
Where not possible for us to reuse, we work with partners to repurpose the waste. For instance, we provide waste to hotels for their food waste composting efforts to create fertiliser. Additionally, we collaborate with local startups to use our wood waste as a substrate for creating new bio-degradable materials.
Can you provide examples of how Greenpac’s multi-material expertise supports circular economy through reuse, recycling, or composting?
Our multi-material expertise means that we are not bound to any single material group but can be innovative. For example, we redesigned the crate for a mass spectrometry instrument from wood to a hybrid wood and paper packaging, cutting one-third of the packaging weight to create a lighter and more cost-efficient solution.
We advocate for localising packaging materials to what is geographically available. When a customer was shifting production from US to Singapore, they sought to replicate the packaging design using pine wood. As pine is not readily available in Southeast Asia, we proposed alternative engineered wood produced regionally, creating carbon and cost savings. We replicate the same localisation practice, not only for wood but also in hardware.
What challenges has Greenpac faced, and how have you overcome them?
One challenge is finding a robust yet sustainable alternative to polyethylene foam. While we have spoken to many foam alternative companies, we have not yet found a solution that has the performance qualities needed and in commercial production. In the meantime, we are constantly working to reduce the amount of foam we use, and to replace foam entirely with paper where feasible.
Another challenge is closing the loop for reusing crates due to the imbalance of global supply chain movements. Our crates are often shipped worldwide, and while designed to be reusable, it is often more economical for customers to purchase new crates than ship back empty crates. We are still exploring collaborations and solutions to further improve circularity,
