All about insight - inspiring sustainable change

We recently hosted a product launch event to introduce Valpak members to the brand-new Valpak Insight Platform (VIP) – an online environmental sustainability and data management suite.

The day was well attended and provided a great opportunity for us to understand the environmental challenges some of our customers face and for us to highlight the services we can offer to help them achieve business sustainability targets.

Waste plastic in the oceans

The event consisted of fascinating group discussions and presentations, including a talk by Dr Geoff Brighty of Plastic Oceans UK.

Dr Brighty and his team help people and businesses think more sustainably for the long-term, with a current core focus on freeing our oceans of plastic waste.

Even those of us familiar with the scale of the issue were shocked by the statistics and accompanying video – it’s always sobering to realise and appreciate the challenges ahead.

Dr Brighty’s talk led into wider discussions and idea-sharing, within the group, around best-practise regarding issues such as:

• identifying and accessing data required to comply with legislative requirements
• using data to help shape environmental policies and achieve objectives:
  • For example, which plastic polymers are used within the supply-chain
• improving supplier data collection and quality
• managing stakeholder expectations – particularly customers

Other topics covered

After a lovely lunch (we get the good stuff in for external visitors!), our Environmental Compliance Consultant, Liz Minshall, had a “fireside chat” style discussion with Felix Gummer of environmental consultancy, Sancroft. The discussion focused on current versus future trends in subject-areas including:

• Potential impact of UK packaging compliance system moving to a “Full Net-Cost” scenario – whereby producers will be required to finance the full cost of collection, treatment, recycling and recovery of packaging they place onto the market. We could be looking at anywhere from 10-17 x current compliance levy rates. Contact us below for further info on this – It’s a rapidly evolving landscape!
• Universal recycling systems and labelling
• Consumer expectations and their impact on product sourcing

The supply-chain transparency challenge

We ultimately concluded that supply-chain transparency is a continuous challenge for many companies. With ever-increasing demands on producers to take every possible step to ensure an ethically, environmentally and economically balanced view of doing business, access to data is key.

Whether it’s to mitigate risk, ensure appropriate costs, appease customers, or to make a more positive environmental contribution, understanding your supply-chain is possibly the most important tool in the box.

Valpak Insight Platform – We can help

Contact us today on 03450 682 572 to find out more about how we can help – why not book a free demo of the Valpak Insight Platform to see how it will benefit you?