After eight years of experience in sustainability and life cycle assessment (LCA), Albéa is getting involved in developing new tools to better meet the industry’s current needs. Several recent development projects position the company as a leader in the use of eco-design and LCA tools in the field of plastic packaging, The goal is to meet the challenges of sustainable development in the industry.

“LCA has become an indispensable tool in many of our business lines: from technical design to selling, it provides decisive information used in choosing the final packaging. To meet all the demands of our customers, we have selected new tools adapted to our business that are effective and easy to deploy,” explains Jean-Claude Jammet, director of innovation and development at Albéa.

In the framework of the Thalia R&D project, Albéa helped develop a new version of the e-DEA software (Everybody can Design with Environmental Awareness, marketed by EVEA) to provide solutions to the specific needs of packaging. In addition to life cycle assessment, this tool makes it possible to integrate concrete, complementary environmental indicators such as those defined by professional organizations in the sector (Global Packaging Project, France’s National Packaging Council), in particular the packaging-product weight ratio, the percentage of recycled material or the percentage of biosourced material.

Albéa has also opted to take into account the social and/or economic risks that could arise from design choices. This development furthers Albéa’s goal of sharing life cycle assessment tools across the entire packaging industry. “The tools themselves can benefit from shared use, which will boost their technical performance and longevity at the industry level. It is especially valuable for ensuring sound methodologies and enriching databases,” reported Jammet.

To incorporate eco-design as far upstream as possible in the product development process, Albéa is also working to deploy the Solidworks® Sustainability software from Dassault Systems Solidworks Corporation to its design teams. Under a partnership with Axemble, Albéa is a pilot company for adapting the tool to its needs. This tool, which will be deployed in 2012, will make it possible to directly measure the environmental impact of each design choice and to offer Albéa’s customers eco-designed alternatives when developing custom packaging.