Abbott Park, IL — Health care company Abbott reduced the amount of plastic in its infant formula containers by 15 percent last year, just one of more than 40 packaging initiatives aimed at cutting Abbott's overall packaging weight by 5 percent by 2013.
Many of the projects are already in place or in the process of launching, and cover products that come out of Abbott's nutrition, medical products and pharmaceutical businesses.
To steer the reduction plan, Abbott has developed packaging standards and guidelines for new packaging, encouraging the use of lighter and more sustainable materials. The changes are coming from both Abbott's in-house packaging groups and outside suppliers. "We are absolutely working with our suppliers and challenging them to come up with solutions," said Pete Macauley, director of product and packaging development for Abbott Nutrition and the team leader for the company-wide reduction effort.
Abbott has also partnered with groups like the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, is working with suppliers that have achieved or are pursuing certification from groups like the Forest Stewardship Council, and is sharing information about its projects with retail customers.
Since 2007, Abbott has reduced its packaging by about 2.88 million pounds a year. While the company is focusing mainly on primary packaging, which is mostly plastic or metal with some glass, it's also exploring ways to lighten or reuse secondary packaging, Macauley said.
For example, the company has a new clamshell package for its pharmaceutical Lupron, which uses 15.8 percent less polystyrene plastic. By developing a new plastic mold, Abbot can use a thinner material for the package, cutting out 12,750 pounds of plastic a year.
Abbott Nutrition has redesigned its 8-ounce bottles for products like Ensure and PediaSure, reducing plastic use by 8.3 percent for a savings of 2.7 million pounds a year. This year Abbott Nutrition also reduced the amount of material in the corrugated boxes for its 32-ounce Ready-to-Feed infant formulas by 14.2 percent, lowering its corrugate use by more than 500,000 pounds a year. The new packaging is 218 grams, down from the previous weight of 255 grams.
One particular challenge that Abbott faces is providing the same amount of protection to its products with fewer materials. "We have a lot of barrier requirements," Macauley said, pointing out that some products need to be refrigerated or sustain specific shelf lives.
Some of Abbott's pharmaceutical product cases are getting packaged in lighter cardboard material, providing an average packaging weight reduction of 14 percent, eliminating 50,000 pounds of packaging so far this year.
Abbott is also exploring reusable packaging for shipping physician samples that need to be refrigerated. The pilot program is replacing large, single-use boxes with smaller boxes made by Greenbox (above) that can be reused more than 100 times.