A digital track and trace system is the best way to encourage businesses to switch to reusable packaging, new research from the University of St Andrews has found.
Carried out in collaboration with Reath, a digital infrastructure start-up founded by St Andrews’ alumni, the findings have been published in the Journal of Sustainable Production and Consumption.
The work identifies how new digital technologies can support a circular economy which aims to be based on reuse rather than disposability.
Researchers interviewed brand manufacturers, retailers, regulatory bodies, NGOs and reuse experts from a variety of industries – including food and beverage, cosmetics and household.
The research uncovered four reasons why businesses will not adopt reusable packaging:
- Affordability, due to additional expenses incurred from changing current systems.
- Current regulations that make single-use containers more competitive.
- Concerns about increased risks and complications for health and safety.
- The potential to damage brand reputation if the scheme didn’t turn out to be better for the environment.
The research team also asked leaders how digitalisation might help overcome these challenges, with the responses then used to create the ‘world’s first’ open data standard for reusable packaging.
The university explained that the standard is an agreed vocabulary for data collection that helps organisations work together as a container moves between the manufacturer, transport provider, retailer, customer and cleaning provider.
The study suggests that digital passports can directly address the hurdles identified by businesses as preventing them from adopting reusable packaging:
- Tracking individual containers with a unique barcode enables businesses to calculate packaging lifespans and return rates from customers, both of which are crucial to determining affordability.
- Currently organisations pay environmental taxes when packaging is released onto the market, but with digital trackers it would be possible to exempt organisations using refillable packaging. In this way, track and trace would allow governments to create taxation that incentivises reuse.
- The unique barcode on a container can help to meet health and safety standards by evidencing cleaning between refills and return to the shop floor.
- The digital passports would enable businesses to tell packaging stories in an appealing way, as they are able to verify and quantify their reuse activities for marketing purposes. A reusable container may require many uses for its environmental footprint to compare favourably with single-use alternatives, and so accurate accounting for refills is core to useful life-cycle assessments.
Researcher from the University of St Andrew’s school of management, Lucy Wishart, said, “There is a belief that technological initiatives in the circular economy fail to capture the social, cultural and political challenges facing organisations when adopting reusable packaging.
“But digitialisation can also help address these challenges through clarifying communication amongst stakeholders and supporting collaboration.”
