Industry worries that the new UK specification (PAS 2050) for calculating carbon footprint would not take into account material-to-material recycling appear to have been allayed.
In a statement, the Metal Packaging Manufacturers' Association (MPMA) says: "Concerns had been expressed that the specification may not fully credit highly recycled products which are produced from a material-to-material loop process." This has now been addressed in a dedicated annex. As a result, the sector says it "appears able to support the proposed methodology" for carbon measurement.
PAS 2050 was developed by the government-funded Carbon Trust and published at the end of October. It paves the way for carbon labelling, designed to reflect the lifecycle of products and packaging with regard to greenhouse gases.
The Carbon Trust is said to have conceded the point about material-to-material recycled content only reluctantly. Container-to-container recycling was already taken into account in the specification. But for the metals sector in particular, this is almost impossible to provide.
The annex, which defers instead to an earlier ISO standard, may also prove to be of importance to other materials sectors such as paper/board and glass. Technical author of the specification Graham Sinden explains why the Carbon Trust felt it necessary to go beyond existing standards: "The ISO standard provides guidance, but does not lay down a 'right' or 'wrong' way of making calculations." This makes benchmarking, and direct comparison, almost impossible.
He adds: "The PAS was trying to find a balance which allowed both for comparability and for a range of possible approaches more or less applicable to different materials."
For materials such as glass, it remains "exceptionally difficult" for brand-owners and converters to 'score' packs from different suppliers, batches or lines, says sector organisation British Glass. And, in terms of the overall cost of implementing and updating carbon labelling, director general David Workman says: "This is the last thing any sector needs as we move into a recession."
Meanwhile, environmental benefits figured prominently among some of the winners of the MPMA-promoted 2008 Best In Metal Awards. Gold award winner in the Sustainability category was a new tin for Nestlé's Quality Street, produced by Crown Speciality Packaging.
The container is said to use 10% less tinplate than the original, and gives improved pallet usage. It features instructions on the underside regarding recycling of the tin and composting of the chocolate wrappers.
Winner of the Supreme Gold Award was the Heineken TenCan self-dispensing 10-litre beer keg, jointly developed by Heineken and Impress Metal Packaging.