Carbon-footprint calculator for multiwall-sack packaging now available
Paper Shipping Sack Mfrs. Assn. releases interactive calculator to
determine net greenhouse-gas emissions for multiwall packaging.
PRESS RELEASE -- Converting Magazine, 11/19/2009 2:19:20 PM
The Paper Shipping Sack Manufacturers' Association announced today its release of a comprehensive interactive calculator enabling its members to estimate the carbon dioxide equivalent of net greenhouse gas emissions for multiwall sack packaging. Its scope includes the sources of raw materials, e.g. forests, raw material manufacture, sack production, use, and end-of-life emissions. Transportation, packaging and solid waste activities are also included.
Stuart Sharp, Chairman of PSSMA's Technical Committee, which oversaw this project said, "This comprehensive tool provides PSSMA's producer members with a fully transparent and documented user-friendly tool to assess the carbon footprint of alternative sack designs". It allows for changes in material selection, manufacturing process or other variables associated with their construction, use and disposal, using plant- and sack-specific parameters.
Dick Storat, president of PSSMA, explained that, when using tools such as this to evaluate aspects of environmental performance of packaging alternatives, it is crucially important to select identical boundary conditions for each system, to include the equivalent raw material, manufacturing, use and disposal components and to use the best available documented emission factors to avoid inappropriate or misleading claims.
The Multiwall Carbon Footprint Calculator was designed and constructed by the National Council For Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI). Use of the tool is restricted to PSSMA's producer members. It allows users the choice of thirteen separate paper components, six types of plastics commonly used in multiwall sack manufacture and numerous other raw materials. This fully transparent model contains more than 100 separate documented emission sources. It can easily be updated as alternative materials or more current data become available.
Reid Miner, NCASI's Vice President for Sustainable Manufacturing, noted that standards for carbon footprint estimation are being developed to eliminate the confusion present today as consultants offer a dizzying array of incongruent carbon footprint calculators without disclosing their scope, boundary conditions and data sources. Mr. Miner, who is active in the development of international standards, emphasized that the PSSMA calculator has been built to be easily adapted to the carbon footprint standards under development. NCASI will conduct additional training for users of the calculator.
Initially, PSSMA used this calculator to assess the average carbon footprint for three styles of multiwall sacks used in the United States: the pinch style used to package dry pet food for retail sale, the pasted valve style used to package cement and the sewn open mouth style used to package seeds and animal feeds. Using data for over 1.7 billion sacks shipped during 2008 (more than half the annual shipments of these sacks), the average carbon footprint for pinched style sacks of all sizes shipped to all end-use markets was 1.5 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per sack. For pasted valve sacks shipped to all market segments, it was 1.0 pounds of CO2 equivalent; and for sewn open mouth sacks, it was 1.5 pounds of CO2 equivalent.
Contact PSSMA or a producer member of PSSMA to learn more about the calculator and to have the carbon footprint of your multiwall packaging calculated. You can find contact information at www.pssma.org
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