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Wal-Mart's packaging scorecard should not be considered an environmental evaluation tool because its aggregated result "cannot be scientifically validated", according to a European packaging expert.

Julian Carroll, managing director of the European Organisation for Packaging and the Environment (Europen), told the Third Annual Sustainable Packaging Forum in Pittsburgh that the scorecard should not become an industry standard.

He pointed out that its evaluation of the recovery value of packaging excluded primary packaging taken home by consumers and only focused on packaging that remained in the custody of Wal-Mart.

He also said the scorecard's product-to-packaging ratio component "tends to discourage product concentration and smaller portions, which conflicts with current market trends… to reduce portion sizes".

The Wal-Mart packaging scorecard contains nine criteria and requires all suppliers of packaged goods to submit data on their packaging and its environmental performance.

Recycled material content, transport distances and methods of waste recovery are among the criteria for evaluation.

Wal-Mart has said it considers the scorecard to be one of its business management tools, and Carroll said he "accepted that as such it can perform a valuable function".

Carroll also said market forces had been the key drivers in North America for environmental improvements, while legislative pressure had been the main instrument for change in Europe.

However, he said the UK was the exception because, like the US, it had not established a nationwide system to collect and manage source-separated household packaging waste.

Carroll also pointed to the European experience of packaging scorecards, particularly the proposal in 2003 from the European Parliament to develop a Packaging Environmental Indicator (PEI), and a similar joint government and industry initiative in The Netherlands.

Europen had opposed the indicator, saying it was "unnecessary, unclear and impractical".

The plans were subject to a feasibility study and scrutiny by various interested parties, but "none of them succeeded in producing a reliable and accurate tool for the stated purpose", said Carroll.