Greenhouse Gas Calculator: Emission Reductions from
Packaging Reused
CLICK HERE to download the Calculator
Subject
Industry education and awareness of greenhouse gas emission reductions resulting from the utilization of multi-trip (i.e., reusable) industrial packaging.
Problem Statement
According to a 2001 report by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, “[g]reenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperature and subsurface ocean temperature to rise.”[1] While the specific impacts of global warming are uncertain, many scientists believe that significant changes to weather patterns, agricultural patterns, and water resources will occur over time. These changes are expected to impact human populations, particularly those living in coastal areas. Economic and societal risks associated with global warming justify action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Much of this action should be focused on U.S. industrial activities, because the United States produces nearly a quarter of the world’s GHG emissions.
Significant quantities of known greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, are produced as a direct result of the manufacture of new industrial packagings.[2] The American Society for Testing and Materials defines industrial packagings as “…packages used for the transportation or storage of commodities, the contents of which are not meant for retail sale without being repackaged.” In excess of 100 million industrial packagings are sold annually in the U.S.[3]
Reuse of industrial packagings limits GHG production by reducing the environmental burdens associated with packaging manufacturing operations. To date, reductions in natural resource and energy demands, as well as waste generation and emissions associated therewith, have been quantified for the steel drum.[4] Work is proposed to extend this analysis to other industrial packagings such as plastic drums and crates, as well as pallets.
All manufacturing sectors in the U.S., including those producing chemicals, paints, adhesives, oil, lubricants and foodstuffs, use industrial packagings to store and transport finished and unfinished commodities. Too few of these companies are aware of the impact of packaging selection and use on GHG emissions.
Proposed Solution
To address these concerns, it will be necessary to do the following:
- Raise awareness among industrial packaging users of GHG and global warming issues, highlighting the nexus between GHG emissions and packaging selection and reuse. The initial focus will be on shippers of hazardous materials.
- Formalize an accepted means of calculating and reporting GHG emission reductions associated with the utilization of reusable industrial packagings;
- Assign the benefits (e.g., credits) of GHG emission reductions to the party that makes the initial package selection, i.e., the filler.
Greenhouse Gas Packaging Calculator
RIPA, working in conjunction with Franklin Associates, is developing an Excel spreadsheet-based methodology that calculates the reduction in GHG emissions that can be achieved by using reusable steel drums rather than lighter weight single use drums in an application defined by the user. The methodology employed can be extended to other types of reusable industrial and transport packagings, including plastic drums and crates, intermediate bulk containers and pallets.
The calculator assesses the three major greenhouse gases reported in the Franklin Study (i.e., fossil carbon dioxide associated with the extraction, processing, and combustion of fossil fuels, methane, and nitrous oxide). For each single-trip or reusable drum system, total life cycle releases (in pounds) of each substance is multiplied by its global warming potential factor, which expresses the global warming potential of each substance relative to the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. The global warming potential factors used in the study were taken from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change, 1996.
The container purchaser (i.e., filler) has the option to select a new, single-trip light weighted drum or one that was used before and made ready for reuse by a reconditioning or remanufacturing process. The purchaser, therefore, controls the number of reusable packagings in the system.
To utilize the calculator, the purchaser defines the number of drum shipments currently being made in single-trip drums, then selects the drum type (open-head or tight-head, and drum gauge) of the multi-trip steel drum alternative. The user also enters the drum weight for the multi-trip drum. The total life cycle GHG emissions for the use of multi-trip drums are automatically calculated and subtracted from the total life cycle GHG emissions for the equivalent number of single-use drums required to make the same number of product shipments. The calculator then displays the GHG “savings” in terms of pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents, quantifying the GHG benefits of reusable steel drums for the specific user-defined application.
CLICK HERE to download the Calculator
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