AIP July Victorian Branch Technical Dinner

Simon Lockrey, Research Area Leader, Sustainable Products and Services, Research Fellow, Centre for Design, RMIT University will be discussing how in order to ensure the accuracy of their environmental marketing information about product packaging, Nestlé Oceania (Nestlé) applied a staged strategy of quantifying the environmental impacts of the packaging using various resolution levels of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

Nestlé began the strategy internally by using the streamlined LCA packaging tool PIQET (Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool) to determine the impacts of the packaging of interest. Following the knowledge created by this research, Nestlé commissioned the Centre for Design at RMIT University to run a full product LCA of different packaging, including a rigorous four stage panel peer review, thus providing a bedrock of research to frame marketing information and Life Cycle Marketing Strategy (LCMS) designed to inform consumers about both the decisions they make in regard to the environmental sustainability of the packaging they purchase, and wider environmental sustainability issues.

The second speaker for the evening will be Dr Karli Verghese FAIP, Program Director, Sustainable Products and Packaging, Centre for Design, RMIT University.

Karli’s presentation will  be identifying and integrating packaging sustainability evaluation tools for the product-packaging development process She will highlight the different types of packaging sustainability evaluation tools that can be used to measure the life cycle impacts of products and packaging e.g., checklists, guidelines, life cycle based LCA software. She will also discuss why it is important to integrate these selected evaluation tool(s) early in the product-packaging development process. How the tools identify and support packaging's role within the corporate sustainability strategy will also be discussed.

Simply book on-line via www.aipack.com.au.