Australian online software application breakthrough

The Sustainable Packaging Alliance (SPA) has developed an online software application to provide a means for food and beverage packaging designers and manufacturers to identify, review and prioritise actions to reduce the environmental impact of their products.

Nestlé is the first multinational to be validating and exploring the use of the Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool (PIQET) for worldwide application.

“Companies using the tool are able to assess the environmental impact of their proposed packaging over its lifespan within a matter of minutes. A task which previously would have taken many weeks, thousands of dollars to complete and could only be performed by a small number of life cycle assessment specialists,” said Ian Coles, chair of SPA.

“It offers comparable rankings of the proposed packaging across solid waste, water, energy and climate change criteria. Importantly, PIQET allows users to explore variations to their packaging designs to minimise the effect it has on the key criteria.

“PIQET allows environmental considerations to be taken into account alongside financial and marketing elements — something that could not be done before.”

The software considers all levels of packaging and different product categories and allows for assessments of incoming raw materials packaging systems and outgoing packaging systems of an organisation. It is available by subscription and has already been used by a number of leading food and beverage companies, many whom were involved in its development.

These included Nestlé Australia, Cadbury Schweppes, Lion Nathan, MasterFoods Australia and Simplot Australia.

Dr Lars Lundquist, Packaging Research Scientist at the Nestlé Research Centre in Lausanne, said that PIQET offered great promise to Nestlé to meet its environmental policy requirements on packaging in a more efficient manner.