Packaging

We design our packaging to reliably and cost-effectively protect our products while decreasing impact on the environment in areas such as waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The size and intensity of the impact depends largely on the quantity, type and recyclability of materials used, as well as on how the packaged product is transported. Our packaging initiatives address each of these areas.

Balancing these different factors is complex and often involves tradeoffs. For example, expanded polystyrene is light, which saves transport energy, but its use can increase package size, requiring more box material and decreasing the number of units per pallet. It is easily recycled in some regions, but the needed infrastructure does not exist in others. HP’s packaging engineers use our packaging guidelines and other tools to balance these factors and optimize the overall impact. In addition to materials, we consider total costs and other variables, including impacts related to transport and disposal.

With our Design for Logistics program, we’ve improved transport efficiency and decreased energy use per kilogram of product transported. The program ensures that we consider the broad logistical implications of new product packaging and transport, including issues such as pallet and truck loading.

Highlights from 2007 include the following:

• We entirely eliminated PVC from our packaging.
  
• We engineered the use of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) materials from 100% percent recycled content, which is now used for all inkjet cartridge blister packs.
  
• When appropriate, we continued to replace expanded polystyrene with molded pulp made from recycled paper, which has become suitable for heavier products due to technical improvements (10 kg maximum weight compared with 5.4 kg). All HP camera products now use paper-based packaging.
  
• We have begun using biopolymers, which are biodegradable materials made from crops such as sugar beet and corn.
  
• HP LaserJet toner cartridge packaging now uses 45 percent less packaging material (by weight) than previous designs. This means that 30 percent more cartridges can be shipped on one pallet, and 1,500 more cartridges can ship in one ocean container.
  
• We redesigned HP print cartridge packaging for North America to reduce total weight and increase the proportion of post-consumer recycled material. This saved an estimated 16,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2007 and eliminated more than 3,000 tonnes of PVC (See the case study).

In 2005, HP began tracking packaging material use by product line. Accurate data is currently available only in Europe, and these figures have been extrapolated to provide the worldwide estimates below. The tables show that the average weight of packaging per product continued to fall, although the average plastic weight rose slightly in 2007.

The averages reflect product mix changes and the increased size of some products, particularly televisions and PC screens. Trends such as replacing separate printers, faxes and copiers with all-in-one products also increase packaging per product, but require less packaging in total, helping to make the overall product impact much lower.

The total weights of packaging reflect HP's growing sales volume, which to some extent offsets our achievements in reducing the average weight of packaging per product. Despite higher sales, we used slightly less paper packaging than in 2006 and maintained the total weight of packaging at roughly the same level.

Packaging per product sold globally, 2005-2007 [average grams]

Total weight used [thousand tonnes]

¹ Projected