Sustainability – MSI approach for caring customers

Summary:

Our goal is to develop sustainable products and packaging for our customers. The result of our efforts should be zero net environmental impact with regards to packaging material usage and sustainable processes for all other functions. We should be seen as the leaders in both individual and global sustainable packaging and product. We will accomplish this by focusing on cradle to cradle management of our resources, as identified by our Actions (listed at end of this brief).

Approach:

There is much confusion with regards to what is “green”. There are new products which claim to be biodegradable. There are many materials which are not fully recyclable. The first challenge is to cut through all of this information and get a clear understanding of what sustainability is. Once we agree on the definition of sustainability, we can then identify the processes which we will use to achieve our targets. We will then develop, manufacture, and deliver products which truly sustain the earth, minimize our impact to the planet, and meet cost requirements.

Background:

“Sustainability, in a broad sense, is the capacity to endure. In ecology, the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of wellbeing, which in turn depends on the wellbeing of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources.”[1]

This definition is consistent with the focus of many food companies to keep the human body productive over time and provide long term maintenance of well being. Sustaining the human body should be the focus of food products, but sustaining the earth is the combined focus on processing, packaging, and logistics.

“Sustainability has become a wide-ranging term that can be applied to almost every facet of life on Earth, from a local to a global scale and over various time periods. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems. Invisible chemical cycles redistribute water, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon through the world's living and non-living systems, and have sustained life for millions of years. As the earth’s human population has increased, natural ecosystems have declined and changes in the balance of natural cycles have had a negative impact on both humans and other living systems.

There is now abundant scientific evidence that humanity is living unsustainably. Returning human use of natural resources to within sustainable limits will require a major collective effort. Since the 1980s, human sustainability has implied the integration of economic, social and environmental spheres to: “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”[1]

In summary, we must meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. We cannot use up all of the non-renewable resources and leave nothing to future generations. We have to be mindful of which resources can be used over and which only have a single use. This sounds basic, but to be successful, we must understand that sustainability exists on two levels, individual and global:

Individual Sustainability

We should provide products to humans to improve their well being; individual sustainability. We accomplish this by the products that we develop, produce, and sell. This is typically not within the current control of MSI.

Global human sustainability

We should improve the sustainability of all humanity; global human sustainability. This is a huge effort, but we need to focus our efforts to make sure our portion is managed in a sustainable manner. We can do this by eliminating or minimizing the negative impacts of our production, packaging, and business efforts.

Our focus for production, packaging, and logistics should be that we do not create an ecological deficit. The deficit is created if unsustainable sources are used at a greater rate than their regeneration. In the past, manufacturing engineering focused on cradle to grave analysis. In other words, what happened to materials from their inception (cradle) to the end of their life cycle (grave). This approach needs to be replaced with cradle to cradle design.

Cradle to cradle design models human industry on nature's processes in which materials are viewed as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms. It suggests that industry must protect and enrich ecosystems and nature's biological metabolism while also maintaining safe, productive technical metabolism for the high-quality use and circulation of organic and synthetic materials. Put simply, it is a holistic economic, industrial and social framework that seeks to create systems that are not just efficient but essentially waste free.[2]

Cradle to cradle design will be our basis for systems and package design. We will make sure we understand the life cycle of our materials to ensure that they are ever sustainable. It will be a continuous long term process. We will start at a point that is best available with current materials and technology. We will maintain ongoing lists for improving our sustainability efforts. These lists will be:

The Eliminate List

- substances that must be phased out because they are carcinogenic or deplete unsustainable resources. These things should eliminated as quickly as possible.

The Improve List

- problematic substances, processes, and systems that are not so urgently in need of phasing out, but will be phased over 12 – 18 months.

The Promote List

- the "positive" list, things we want to do more of that benefit the environment and promote sustainability.

Actions:

Our global sustainability efforts will take the form of:

1. Use of 100% recyclable materials so that nothing ever has to go into a landfill, and becomes part of future products. The cycle is sustained.
2. Use as much post consumer recycled material as possible. Reuse of previously processed materials means that no new materials need to be produced thereby reducing carbon footprint and not increasing the demand for non-renewable resources.
3. Use natural, organic ingredients whenever possible. These ingredients are pure and do not require the use of other non-renewable resources to create growth.
4. Use suppliers as close to our facilities as possible. This decreases the fuel used to get materials to the production facility.
5. Use distribution methods which are energy efficient and minimize carbon footprint.
6. Eliminate unnecessary packaging. We have to work to eliminate parts of packages that are not required such as paper inserts, plastic lids atop laminate lids, cartons packed into cases, etc.
7. Minimize packaging used. We need to reduce wall thickness and size of cases or cartons. We want to use multi packs versus individual packs wherever possible.
8. Utilize intermediate shipping containers which are made from recycled materials and can be used many times over. We need to ship canisters or cereal cups in large totes versus small cases.
9. Work with our suppliers to continually reduce the use of virgin material, increase the use of recycled material, and generate ideas to reduce material content of all packaging.
10. The order of priority of how we focus on materials is:
    1. Reduce—we will eliminate what we can to reduce cost and have an immediate positive impact on source reduction.
    2. Reuse – we will use the items as many times as possible before recycling.
    3. Recycle --We will recycle all materials at the end of their current life cycle so that they can become new and different items.

Footnotes:

1. United Nations General Assembly (1987) Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Transmitted to the General Assembly as an Annex to document A/42/427 - Development and International Co-operation: Environment. Retrieved on: 2009-02-15.
2. Lovins, L. Hunter (2008). Rethinking production in State of the World 2008, pp. 38-40.
3. "Living Planet Report 2008". 2008. http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report_2008.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-11-19.