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Right-Sizing Done Right: Stories from Top Brands

If you’ve followed the packaging industry for the past few years, you’ve likely noticed the use of sustainable packaging solutions has shifted from merely a luxury to a necessity for those who want to stay competitive. And in many cases, incorporating sustainable packaging is further shifting from voluntary to mandatory, with the development of extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation in several US states and over 60+ countries

As brands and packaging providers race to implement sustainable solutions, two distinct paths are being explored.

  1. Focusing on innovation and partnerships to bring new and unconventional solutions to the market, like UK-based Notpla—specializing in home compostable and edible single-use plastic alternatives made of seaweed bioplastic for the food and beverage industry.
  2. Looking internally with the help of life cycle assessment (LCA) or auditing packaging systems to find inefficiencies and room for improvement, like

Coca-Cola—launching a lightweighting initiative to reduce bottle weight from 21 to 18.5 grams across the United States (US) and Canada. This move will reduce the “annual use of new plastic” to the equivalent of ~800 million bottles in the year 2025 as compared to 2024.

These two paths are often explored together and prove complementary to one another, allowing brands to deliver the least amount of environmental impact as possible with their packaging. Another common method used in packaging design to reduce environmental impact and inefficiencies is right-sizing.

In this blog, we will take a deep dive into right-sizing, including an overview and three distinct case studies covering how top brands have implemented right-sizing packaging initiatives.

Right-Sizing Explained

Right-sizing refers to a process of developing packaging that is optimally sized to fit the product, minimizing excess material, space, and environmental impact.

Many consumers experience frustration when the product they order online comes in an unnecessarily large box they then have to dispose of, but even more important is the environmental impact of this type of packaging waste. For these reasons, more and more consumers are encouraging brands to adopt sustainable packaging solutions.

A 2023 MicKinsey study and survey on perceptions around sustainable packaging in the US found that approximately 50% of US consumers claim they are willing to pay a premium for sustainable packaging. The findings show 50% are willing to pay 1–3% more, 25% willing to pay 4–7% more, and 12% willing to pay 7–10% more. In other words, consumers are not only campaigning for brands to adopt more sustainable solutions, they are also willing to pay the price (in many cases) for these changes.

The issue of excessive packaging has become so prominent lately that the New Jersey Senate passed S226, a bill which would “prohibit large online and major retailers in the state from shipping products to consumers in cardboard or corrugated boxes that exceed two times the volume of the product being shipped,” reports Maria Rachal from Supply Chain Dive.

With the rise of extended producer responsibility (EPR) bills that include packaging in their scope, producers in states like California, Colorado, Minnesota, and more will work to right-size and lightweight their packaging solutions to ensure reduced producer responsibility organization (PRO) fees—as more packaging material and weight equals higher fees.

In order to truly understand the benefits of right-sizing packaging at scale, let’s explore some examples from Amazon, HP, and Walmart.

HP: All-in-One PC Packaging Redesign

HP AIO PACKAGING

A recent Packaging World article reports that HP recently redesigned the packaging for its All-in-One PC line, focusing on right-sizing and eliminating the use of expanded polyethylene (EPE) and other plastics. The new All-in-One packaging is made from a mix of recycled corrugated board, paper board, molded pulp, and a small amount of 90–100% recycled EPE foam.

Packaging World highlights that the redesigned packaging contains 5 grams of EPE, which represents 98% less EPE than the original 24-inch model and 91% less than the original 27-inch model.

Not only did HP focus on switching the materials utilized to make the packaging system more sustainable, but they also explored how to optimize the package size to reduce the overall waste and cost.

Darrick Christensen, Packaging Design and Procurement Manager at HP, was quoted in Packaging World stating: “For us, shipping air in our packaging is the greatest evil. We want everything to be as efficient as possible, while of course utilizing sustainable materials.”

In order to reduce the amount of air in the All-in-One packaging, HP had to change the product itself—redesigning the computer stand so it could detach from the screen in order to lay flat in the packaging. It’s important to note that sometimes right-sizing packaging requires modifications to the products themselves.

This change alone led to a 45% reduction in the overall packaging size of the 24-inch model and a 67% reduction in the overall packaging size for the 27-inch model.

HP AIO BOX

Another component to right-sizing is optimizing pallet density, thereby, lowering costs for shipping. Pallet density is a measure of the amount of product that can be put onto a pallet for shipping.

Packaging World notes that the redesign for the All-in-One and its packaging resulted in a 66% increase in pallet density for the 24-inch model and a 133% increase in the 27-inch model. Put another way, HP can fit 66% more product per pallet than the previous product and packaging design of the 24-inch model.

With Christensen and HP’s redesign of the All-in-One packaging, HP is able to demonstrate how utilizing alternative materials and designing with right-sizing and pallet density in mind can lead to an increase in efficiency and a decrease in overall environmental impact.

Walmart: Right-Sizing Cardboard Boxes with Custom-Fitting Tech

Walmart RIght-Sizing

A June 2023 article by Retail Dive highlights that in an effort to tackle Scope 3 emissions related to their eCommerce segment and overall business, Walmart has worked to implement paper mailers and right-size its cardboard boxes used to fulfill online orders.

The article by Maria Rachal notes that Walmart is, “implementing technology in about half of its fulfillment network that helps create packages custom-fitted to an order, which can reduce the need for filler by 60% and reduce waste up to 26%.”

Walmart, in a press release from the same day, highlights that the technology creates a package that is custom fit for each customer’s order—reducing unnecessary waste, expanding pallet density, and “creating a better unboxing experience for customers.”

The notion of “creating a better unboxing experience for customers” through right-sizing speaks to an important point—not only does right-sizing lead to more efficient and sustainable packaging, it also leads to ergonomic packaging systems. Customers often express dissatisfaction when they order online and receive packages that seem 3–4x larger than necessary to package the product contained within. Not only does this create unnecessary packaging waste, it also becomes a burden for the consumer to deal with.

Amazon: Right-Sizing Private Brand Packaging - Insights from SPC Impact

Amazon FBA packaging

In April of this year, Packaging World wrote an article covering Amazon’s right-sizing initiatives for private brand packaging that were discussed by Matt Swenson, Sustainable Packaging Manager at Amazon, at the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s (SPC) Impact 2024 event in New Orleans, USA.

For Swenson, a first step in a company’s journey toward “packaging sustainability” should be finding ways to eliminate unnecessary packaging materials through packaging design and right-sizing.

As one of the largest eCommerce platforms in the world, Amazon has a ton of private label brands. In order to right-size packaging efficiently, Swenson and the Amazon packaging team needed a process. The team decided to analyze packages through the metric of “material intensity,” which Packaging World describes as, “calculated as grams of packaging delivered per cubic inch of product.”

The team used this metric to identify that Amazon’s private brand batteries have a high score on material intensity—this led the team to take action to right-size the package. Swenson was quoted in Packaging World stating:

“We reduced our cube by about 33%, and we reduced our material utilization by 14%. But it really started with us asking that question, ‘What is this? What is the minimum level package for this product?’ And working backwards from manufacturing capabilities to customer expectations, then to requirements with a distribution network.”

In order to catalyze right-sizing initiatives beyond Amazon’s private label brands, Swenson created Amazon’s “first internal sustainability certification”—Compact by Design.

According to Amazon, they created Compact by Design to “identify products that, while they do not always look very different, have a more efficient design. By reducing water and/or air in the product or packaging, these become more efficient to ship. At scale, these small differences in product size and weight lead to significant carbon emissions reductions.”

Swenson also reflected on how the digital shelf allows for more right-sizing, stating:

“We’ve consistently heard that making a package and product smaller and more efficient gets them lost on the store shelf. This is our way to use the digital shelf to our advantage to draw attention to our customers who use more efficient products and ensure that they’re getting recognition.”

Swenson and Amazon illustrate how right-sizing is a great way to dive into implementing sustainable packaging initiatives. Through the use of internal metrics and sustainability certifications like Compact by Design, Amazon is working to increase efficiency and sustainability in both private label and brand owners selling on Amazon.

Learn More About Sustainable Packaging Design

As HP, Walmart, and Amazon have illustrated, focusing on right-sizing packaging solutions can help increase efficiency, reduce shipping costs, improve environmental performance, and lead to more ergonomic solutions.

Right-sizing is just one way to improve the sustainability of your packaging solutions—countless methods exist and new processes are being explored daily across industry and academia. To help the industry navigate sustainable packaging design solutions, we created a 40-hour online program called the Certificate of Sustainable Packaging (CSP).

One of the modules in the Certificate of Sustainable Packaging (CSP) grants you access to a life cycle assessment (LCA) software designed to evaluate packaging solutions. An LCA provides a systematic, data-driven, and comparative approach to measuring the environmental impact of different packaging systems; learn to utilize the method to compare packaging systems and stay compliant with the reporting process of different extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs here: https://packagingschool.com/certifications/get-to-know-csp

SOURCES

https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/new-jersey-senate-rightsizing-boxes-ec ommerce/720609/

  • Flanagan, C. (2024, June 13). New HP computer packaging cuts plastic and extra space. Packaging World.

https://www.packworld.com/sustainable-packaging/recycling/article/22912241/ new-hp-computer-packaging-cuts-plastic-and-extra-space

  • Rachal, M. (2023, June 1). Walmart switching to paper mailers, rightsizing boxes to cut packaging waste. Retail Dive.

https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-ecommerce-packaging-waste-paper- mailers-rightsized-cardboard-boxes/651776/

  • Walmart. (2023, June 1). Walmart doubles down on reducing waste to create more sustainable omnichannel fulfillment network. Walmart Corporate News and Information.

https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/06/01/walmart-doubles-down-on-red ucing-waste-to-create-more-sustainable-omnichannel-fulfillment-network