As part of its ongoing green commitment, the company is preparing for the ISO 14001 environmental management standard, as well as trying to calculate offsets needed for its operations.
“We are striving to achieve Environmental Management Standard ISO 14001 in May 2011,” explained Daniel Müller, who has been appointed Environmental Manager to the company.
“My role is to prepare, plan and implement an environment management system, and to build up a useful control mechanism,” he said.
Offsetting projects for carbon neutral tubes
In addition, the company has approached myclimate Foundation, a Switzerland-based non profit foundation to help calculate offset returns.
Firstly, the company provides data regarding materials, transportation, and the disposal of hazardous substances which myclimate uses to calculate the offset returns required. These offsets are then used to promote certified environmental projects.
Neopac customers then have the choice to purchase carbon neutral tubes and pay the extra money to support these projects, which helps the company respond to the demands of customers wanting ‘green tubes’, according to Müller.
“They [customers] are seeking to offer products with a good eco-balance that are safer for the environment as well as the consumer. In this way, they are not only meeting the needs of the consumer, but also creating an image of an environmentally conscious supplier,” he said.
Customers choosing this option will end up paying an extra 1-2 per cent of the sales price, according to Neopac’s marketing and communications representative Cornelia Schmid.
“Some of our customers have already said they will pay the extra, in the cosmetics sector it is often the natural products manufacturers who are most interested,” she told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com.
Schmid was keen to point out that the offsetting products programme, the cost of which falls mainly on Neopac’s customers, is only one of the company’s strategies.
“We are also offsetting all of our business trips as well as investigating new lines of products and decoration techniques that are more environmentally friendly,” she said.
New materials such as post consumer regrind and PLA are being considered by the company, but Schmid explained that it remains challenging to create tubes with good barrier properties using them.