Packaging Pillars
According to the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, these criteria should be followed to
incorporate sustainability into businesses. The group says sustainable packaging:
• Is beneficial, safe, and healthy for individuals and
communities throughout its life cycle.
• Meets market criteria for performance and cost.
• Is sourced, manufactured, transported, and recycled
using renewable energy.
• Maximizes the use of renewable or recycled source
materials.
• Is manufactured using clean production technologies
and best practices.
• Is made from materials healthy in all probable
end-of-life scenarios.
• Is physically designed to optimize materials and
energy.
• Is effectively recovered and utilized in biological
and/or industrial cradle-to-cradle cycles.
and reused a number of times.”
While the R-Value Program itself is
nothing new, it is unique in the world
of Bio-Transportation, where biophar-maceutical organizations invest significantly in high-end solutions for the
safe and compliant transportation of
TSPs. “It really is no different from
trading in your computer or old dishwasher,” says Don Wilson, senior manager, engineering, at Amgen Inc.
“What ends up happening is the same:
You keep the good pieces and reuse
them, and you replace the bad.”
Successful alignment projects like
this one often require a creative leap of
imagination, either in recognizing connections or in finding innovative,
effective ways of connecting the dots.
“The dots in this case were that
Amgen was spending a lot of money
on the BioSphere to transport goods
internationally but once they reached
their final destination, prematurely
PHARMA-BIO TRANSPORT | February 2008
they had also reached the end of their
life cycle,” says Gary Hutchinson,
director, global transportation, Amgen
Inc. “From our own testing, we knew
the design was more robust. So, we
looked for another dot, and that was
where and how we could extend the
life of the BioSphere and be able to
utilize that extended resource at any of
our locations across the world, when
we need it.”
EnviroCooler’s Global Manufacturing Network has been integral to the
successful implementation of the program in four of its five locations since
October 2007. Each of the four locations not only manufactures new and
replacement components for the
BioSphere, but they also act as
R-Value Program portals for reentering returned and recertified components into the R-Value Program
closed loop for the remainder of its
life cycle.
“Projects like this of course present
inherent risks initially,” says Paul Harber, associate engineering consultant,
Eli Lilly & Co. “But they can also
offer dramatic possibilities to unlock
existing latent potential for positive
change. Innovation and creativity represent some of the most valuable and
unlimited resources at our disposal in
the quest for a sustainable world.”
The best designers will affirm that
they do not set out to solve problems,
but rather to create solutions. Great
design is therefore an optimistic
endeavor. ■
Carli Derifield joined EnviroCooler as
its first director of marketing in 2006. Her
MSc in Oceanography and her 12 years of
experience within the pharmaceutical, supply
automation, and consulting industries across
Europe, Australia, and the United States
has aided the promotion of EnviroCooler’s
approach as a bio-pharma shipping solution.
