Product packaging materials constitute a significant portion of the municipal solid waste stream in the United States. The purpose of this thesis was to redesign an existing packaging system to be more sustainable and have less impact on the environment. Three methods of increasing packaging system sustainability were studied: materials replacement, dematerialization, and value-added design. A product family of children’s die cast toy cars was selected as a case study.
The primary packaging of the toys consists of paperboard and plastic blisters. These packages are transported in corrugated cardboard boxes that are unitized on wooden pallets with stretch wrap. The redesign system replaces the paperboard and plastic primary packaging with molded pulp packaging. Molded pulp is a compostable material created from recycled cellulose-based products and water using a vacuum forming process. Although the material is commonly used in packaging applications, its material properties are not standardized. The elastic modulus and yield strength of molded pulp specimens were determined through tensile testing. Compression tests were performed and then simulated through finite element analysis in order to validate the experimentally-determined material properties.
The redesigned packaging system eliminated the use of cardboard boxes. The primary packages were designed to be stacked and wrapped onto pallets without the use of additional secondary packaging materials. This reduced the amount of necessary packaging materials while still protecting and transporting the toys.
Finally, the primary packages were designed to fulfill users’ needs across multiple use environments. The packages were designed to transport, protect, and display the toys within retail environments; however, they were also designed to be incorporated into play behaviors of children. The redesigned packages would transcend product protection by fulfilling additional needs of the users. This would spur further dematerialization and waste reduction in the packaging system.
The environmental impacts of the current and redesigned packaging systems were investigated through an eco-audit, a life cycle assessment design tool. The energy use and carbon emissions of the packaging systems were calculated through five steps: raw materials, processing, transport, use, and disposal. It was estimated that the redesigned packaging system would use nearly 50 percent less energy per kilogram of packaging material and produce approximately 68 percent less carbon emissions than the current system.
The redesigned packaging system used molded pulp packaging, eliminated the use of cardboard boxes through unitized primary packaging design, and integrated the primary package into the use of the contained product. These three methods were shown to result in a more sustainable system and could serve as a model to many other product packaging systems.