By CHRIS SERRES
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
This past month, a small change swept through the consumer electronics department at Target stores: iPod carrying cases came wrapped in cardboard. The seemingly irrelevant change -- when coupled with new packaging on several hundred other items -- adds up to a significant environmental impact that critics charge is long overdue.
Previously, iPod carrying cases came wrapped in two pieces of plastic bonded together. But earlier this year, Target decided this tough-to-open package -- known as a clamshell -- was a waste.
Worse still, it was made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which contains chemicals linked to cancer and other serious health problems.
So with the force of a retailer with 1,500 stores and $60 billion in annual sales, Target asked its packaging vendor to replace the clamshell with a recyclable cardboard package with a small plastic window. This single change will prevent an estimated 5,000 pounds of PVC from entering landfills each year.
For decades, big-box retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart Stores have used their extraordinary size to squeeze lower prices from suppliers, which have a vested interest in keeping them happy.
However, in a recent shift, they are exerting this power to eliminate oversized and over-wrapped packaging for their private-label products. As a result, everything from laundry detergent to cardboard boxes used for shipping cereal are shrinking in size. In some cases, environmentally harmful PVC packages have been replaced with recyclable material; in other cases, the packaging has been eliminated entirely.
About 18 months ago, Target pushed its seven private-label packaging companies to get rid of excess wraps. The result: Packages for more than 500 items, from dog leashes to toy rocket launchers, have been redesigned to be less harmful to the environment. In about 100 instances, PVC plastic was eliminated from private-label packages.
Wal-Mart has gone further. The retail giant has pledged to eliminate all private-label PVC packaging by 2009. The company also has set a goal of producing "zero waste" by 2025; which means that, through recycling and packaging reduction, Wal-Mart will eliminate all waste flowing through its stores and offices.
These commitments are not without substance. Containers and packaging account for approximately 32 percent of the waste that ends up inland fills, according to a 2003 report by the Environmental Protection Agency. A large portion of that waste comes from products sold at Target and Wal-Mart, which together account for more than 10 percent of retail sales in the United States, excluding autos.
According to Charles Fishman, author of a book on Wal-Mart, "hundreds of acres of trees have not fallen" in part because of Wal-Mart's decision in the early 1990s to eliminate cardboard containers for deodorant, which have now universally disappeared.
"What their efforts show is that the environmental benefits of even small changes to packages can add up pretty quickly," said Gwen Ruta, director of corporate partnerships with Environmental Defense, which is working with Wal-Mart on its packaging.
Although environmentalists generally applaud the changes, they want more. They want the companies to put more pressure on consumer products companies, such as Procter & Gamble and General Mills, to reduce the size of their packaging.
John Butcher, director of packaging at Target, said many of its products are manufactured in areas of the world where alternatives to PVC are in short supply.
"I'd love to just snap my fingers and say we've enhanced thousands of items overnight," he said. "But this process takes time."
E-mail Chris Serres at cserres(at)startribune.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
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