Accelerate Sustainable Packaging, Circularity, and Reporting with SAP Responsible Design and Production (RDP)

Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns is Goal 12 ?in the Global Goals in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.?

The focus of this goal is collaboration between companies and governments to improve resource efficiency, reduce waste and pollution, and shape a new circular economy.

In addition to this strong purpose and target-driven Goal, there are increasing numbers of regulations to control and limit waste and encourage circularity.?

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) ?requirements for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) companies, packagers, and especially for battery and electric vehicle manufacturers, are getting tougher. Furthermore, complex EPR reporting demands need to be fulfilled.

EPR was originally coined by?Thomas Lindhqvist ?from Sweden in 1990. In recent years, the European Union has widened obligatory EPR as a policy tool to cover many waste streams, since these were formalized in the?Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive ?in 1994.??

EUROPEN ?– the European Organization for packaging and the Environment – represents a network of 72 members representing the entire packaging value chain, covering glass, metal, plastic, paper and card, and wood.

There is a strong focus on improving circularity of plastics and reducing the quantities of virgin plastic used in this packaging community. In the UK there has been a plastic tax in place since 2022, and from January 2023 Spain and Italy are now introducing a similar tax.?

The scope of plastic taxes includes most single-use plastics used for primary packaging, such as disposable product boxes or plastic bags, or secondary and tertiary packaging such as plastic rings for cans or wrapping products for storage and transportation.

These taxes and other economic incentives should have a strong impact on reducing plastic pollution and unrecycled plastic packaging, while accelerating producers’ moves to redesign products for the circular economy.?

For example, companies such as?Mars are also leading the way, with Nestlé , to scale out paper-based packaging in redesigning and replacing non-recyclable wrappers and primary packaging for confectionary.?

Another target from the Goal is to halve per capita?global food waste ?at the retail and consumer levels by 2030 and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.

Plastic taxes and the incentives to reduce food waste have facilitated packaging innovations such as bioplastic companies?MarinaTex ?to develop alternatives to single-use plastic.?

MarinaTex reuses fish waste, which a?UN report estimated at over 50 million tons per year , to create bioplastic. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)?highlights in its strategy ?that upgraded value chains, public and private actors, including consumers, can reduce loss and waste.

SAP is well positioned to support the packaging value chain's transformation. We enable networks of packagers and their customers in various industries such as CPG that are consuming primary packaging, as well as the tertiary packagers and logistics companies moving these goods and returns.?

SAP has collaborated with our strategic customers to improve resource efficiency and shape a new circular economy with?SAP Responsible Design and Production (RDP).

SAP RDP ?can be used to calculate EPR obligations and plastics taxes, and fulfill the complex regulatory reporting required for municipal and government schemes.?

SAP RDP can also be used to plan and simulate improved EPR packaging scenarios and trigger product redesigns in collaboration with marketing, production, and suppliers.?

Connected with design partners and suppliers, customers can use SAP RDP to build circularity into products and reduce waste, helping the world run better and improve people’s lives.?