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Navigating The

Sustainability Highway
sustainability is a road into uncharted territory, destined to be
perpetually under construction. Travelers think they know the destination, but does anyone REALLY understand how to get there
Or Where the Fuels Going to Come From?
Its difcult to ignore the facts and science regarding the limits on our planets energy supply, and how this will impact our ability to keep pace with exponential growth in demand. The same is true regarding the negative effects of fossil-based energy on the environment. A few things, however, are clear: the large and growing world population, combined with unprecedented levels of economic expansion over the past century have been possible ONLY because of these dense, cheap forms of energy and related raw materials.

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Hold My Hoe While I Innovate

We like to credit our innovativeness for this growth but in reality, we only had time to innovate because coal, and then oil freed us from working in the elds growing food. Arguably, many of the 6+ billion current living humans exist solely because of the cheapness and impact of fossil-energy forms. Prior to 1820, world population grew at a rate a bit over .4% annually to 1 billion. Since 1820 on the back of rst coal and then oil the growth rate has accelerated dramatically. The reason: food more abundant and cheaper than at any time in history, allowing us to spend our time on something other than basic survival. Further, history proves that exceeding energy supply limits not only limits further population growth, but it can also shrink populations in relatively short periods.

money from you to them. For example, Wal-marts scorecard rewards short supply chains in its transportation element. Does this mean Wal-mart will stop sourcing from China and pay substantially more for labor in its products in order to reduce the tremendous consumption of oil currently embodied in ocean and trucking freight, and especially the air freight that occurs when this 46 month long supply chain doesnt respond to the market rapidly enough? Not likely.

Is Sustainability, Well, ah Sustainable?

Will Wal-mart stick with their program over time? Maybe. Time will tell. A program like this wouldnt be the rst to fail for lack of follow through. Wal-mart, though, is taking strong rst steps by establishing goals and measuring progress. Further, it appears that Wal-mart is making sustainability scores not only a criteria for being able to sell products to them, but also for measuring the success of their own buyers. There is data indicating that Wal-mart is making 25% of its buyers bonuses contingent on their suppliers sustainability scores. (Sara Hartwell, U.S. EPA, in Global Green USA Session Minutes, 7/27/06) Sustainability becomes an even greater challenge when we start adding this new requirement to the already lengthy list of constraints in package designs. The sustainability answer will be different for every product, and even this answer will be uid over time. In addition, the external world is not yet ready to take on sustainability. Our PET recycling rate is lower in 2005 than it was in 1993. PLA is beginning to contaminate the PET recycle stream threatening what PET recycling we were doing. There will be many problems to solve, lots of interests threatened, but also lots of new opportunities. Sustainability is going to be a Gordian knot requiring lots of analysis, patience, trial, and error to untie. In the end, the Gordian knot had to be cut. If thats the outcome for plastics, what might cutting the knot look like? Re-lling your bottle from an in-store dispenser, perhaps?

SES Shares Secret Knowledge About Plastics Sustainability

On the other hand, here at SES we KNOW that plastic bottles statistically are 1020% overweight for the tasks currently performed. Achieving perfection in bottle weights without changing anything else would reduce annual bottle resin consumption in the U.S. alone by 1.42.8 billion pounds and have a value of $.81.6 Billion. And this is before we consider the downward price pressure on the poor resin suppliers from the sudden onset of excess capacity. Somebody can pocket this money. How about you! Its simply a fact that a primary reason bottles are overweight is because both the resin and bottle manufacturers, who largely provide the designs, make more money from selling more resin. Its against their interests to seriously conserve.

No Pain, No Sustainable Gain That we must begin to husband the use of remaining nite materials and begin to consider near-term privations to protect the environment and our species future seems to be the basis for the rapid rise in interest in sustainability. But wait! Havent we been here before? Did someone mention Malthus? Will we care if oil goes back to $30 per barrel or less? Should we care if protection of the environment involves short-term pain?
These questions form the essence of the sustainability challenge. We like our lifestyles. We have unprecedented freedom of movement, pay little for food, and live in physical environments rivaling those of kings in past civilizations. The convenience is incredible. WHY should we give this up? So what if 2100 never happens. Well be dead anyway! Its our great-great grandchildrens problem.

Its All About Tough Choices Lee Scott, Wal-marts Chairman said in a speech on February 1; What if we worked with our suppliers to take non-renewable energy off our shelves and out of the lives of our customers? Well folks, plastic is non-renewable energy. That bottle in your hand is gasoline in solid form, and Mr. Scott is proposing to take it off Walmarts shelves. Recent re-emergence of plastic bans, bottle deposit bills, and the like come quickly to mind. Which would you rather have? Untying the knot being more sustainable, or cutting the knot and selling a lot less plastic? If we want to do this in a sustainable way rather than not at all, wed better get started. Sustainability Done Right! SES is already working on a wide variety of sustainability projects and is joining a number of its clients as a member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. In addition, SES unique combination of materials, analysis, manufacturing, and economics capabilities allows us to broadly assess ranges of solutions. We look for realistic solutions that work today, but always stretching, thinking about, and planning for tomorrows unanticipated solution. Our goal is to help you, and Wal-marts buyers, maximize your bonuses.

Hats Off to Wal-Mart

Is Wal-mart wrong to put pressure on being more sustainable? Wal-mart is arguably doing a large service by pushing on all of us to add sustainability to the list of considerations involved in designing products and packaging. Walmart uniquely has the size and clout to encourage this kind of change and have something actually occur.

Supersize Mine, With a Little Sustainability on the Side

Large corporations advocating sustainability really arent likely to accept meaningful upward changes in product economics to achieve their goals. Some, perhaps many, want to see the Wal-mart scorecard as yet another way to move

More Than Just Light-Weighting Maximum sustainability scores will occur with large, square packages made of recycled bio-materials produced with renewable facility energy, and supply chains that are local. But will this deliver a package that works and consumers will still buy? SES can help you design successful structures that will provide meaningful environmental scores, perform well, AND be cost effective. Some Examples Should you use a PET cylinder or a PLA square for a bottle? The PLA bottle will score high for using a bio-resin, generate fewer greenhouse gases, be cube efcient, and may have a high product to package weight ratio. The PET package may require less total resin and be less cube efcient, but be more economic and have a better product to package weight ratio.
Which has a higher Sustainability Score a square PLA bottle, a PET cylinder, a bag-in-box, or a steel or aluminum can? The answer is it depends. Packages are systems and need to be designed and managed as systems. Simply changing a single component can be dangerously misleading.

Eliminate Guesswork Make Decisions Based on Data SES is one of the few organizations in the world with the mix of skills necessary to provide an assessment that allows you to make packaging choices based on a high level of data. SES has been using advanced engineering, manufacturing, and economic knowledge for years to support many of the worlds largest corporations in reducing unnecessary package material consumption. With the average plastic bottle 1020% overweight, the potential for both improving sustainability scores and saving money is signicant. Know Your Wal-Mart Sustainability Score SES will report, based on the information available to us, the impact of design changes on your Wal-Mart score. In addition, we are uniquely positioned to help you assess and understand the full range of benets and costs at a systems level.

SES Can Help You Successfully Navigate The Sustainability Highway

Call 866-888-8333 Today

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