Retail has a major impact on the environment as the production of consumer goods is highly resource intensive.  Agricultural activities, for example, use about 70% of global freshwater, 40% of earth’s inhabitable land and emit 24% of CO2 emissions. Packaging plays vital roles to minimize food waste (extend shelf life), allow for adequate quality and hygiene standards, and protect goods during transportation and handling, while also serving other purposes such as marketing and convenience. However, packaging has become a considerable and increasing threat for the environment itself. The topic of sustainable packaging has gained tremendous momentum with consumer boycotts, government bans, and industry commitments. Likewise, Denner AG has announced to reduce packaging by at least 20% until 2025.

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​In January 2019, sus.lab developed a concept for an Innovation Centre for Sustainable Retail, co-financed by Climate-KIC, to accelerate innovation towards a sustainable society. Literature research and interviews with retailers, brand owners, industry data providers and authorities revealed that fundamental information on the amount of packaging was missing. Up to this point, quantifications for packaging were approximated top-down using the amounts of "raw material" procured by the retailer. This approach disallows the assessment of the type and amount of packaging used per product or product category and therefore prohibits systematic and effective packaging optimization. 

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​To fill this information gap, we developed the unique “Packaging Baseline” with the Swiss retailer Denner AG. In June 2019 we started to unpack the entire national standard product portfolio, covering approximately 4000 products. Linking the packaging data with sales data allowed us to calculate the absolute yearly amounts of packaging produced. The results show how much of each packaging material is used, as well as which packaging is used for which products (paper to be published soon). This rich database now provides transparency across the industry and can be the foundation to support policy makers and industry players to transition towards a circular economy in retail. 

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For more information on the outcomes of the database, take a look at the follow-up project: Innovation Potentail in Retail. 

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If you’d like to know more about this project, please contact Julia Bachmann.