Linpac Allibert claims carbon high ground with RTP study

Allibert has partnered with environmental consultant Sustain to measure the carbon footprint of its Maxinest distribution tray.

The company is now planning to offer a software toolkit to customers that, it said, will allow them to calculate the life cycle CO2-equivalent emissions of the end-user’s specific application.

The calculations, which have been certified by assessment body Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance and were based on the PAS 2050 carbon footprinting specification, found that the tray had a carbon footprint of 26kg of CO2 equivalent.

The launch is the latest play in the competition between returnable plastic transit packaging and its corrugated board alternative.

Allibert commercial director Danilo Oliynik said: “[The LQRA certificate] provides tangible, independently verified data that will help our customers to reduce their carbon footprint by exploiting the lower carbon footprint of plastic returnable transit packaging.”

Allibert said that the calculations took into account the full life cycled of the trays including raw material production, manufacturing, customer use including transportation and crate washing and disposal or recycling.

LRQA managing director Mike James said: “The importance of independently verified carbon footprint data will continue to grow, as future consumers begin to base their purchasing decisions on the transparency and creditability of environmental data from organisations and products.”

News of the certificate comes a year after Sustain first claimed that Allibert’s plastic RTP was more carbon efficient than single-trip cardboard containers after 20 trips, and had 68% smaller carbon footprint.

At the time the Confederation of Paper Industries called on Allibert to publish Sustain’s full report and said it was “very difficult to make broad generalisations”.

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