Octal partners with Renewable Choice for sustainability analysis

Octal believes in full transparency when it comes to sustainability. In fact, the company stated transparency is simply a good business practice.

Octal is one of the first in the industry to track and publicly disclose the company's waste, water, and carbon footprint as well as an in-depth product-level carbon footprint. The company brought in consultants from Renewable Choice Energy to help provide an analysis of its overall sustainability efforts.

Matt Wood, director of sustainability for Renewable Choice, told PlasticsToday Octal had already been building a sustainable plastics business, and approached Renewable Choice to help develop a more a consistent approach to measuring sustainability.    

"They wanted to find someone they trust to work with them and bring a new perspective and look for new opportunities," he said. "Octal is very proactive when it comes to disclosure and transparency in terms of their sustainability efforts. They fully understand that conducting business in this way will pay dividends in the end."

Renewable Choice helped Octal conduct sustainability assessments in several different areas including:

With the guidance of Renewable Choice, Octal reports voluntarily and annually to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), to the GreenerPackage.com database, and it has also conducted a product level carbon footprint analysis for DPET. It was found that Octal's DPET process uses 67% less energy and has a 25% lower carbon footprint than traditional PET manufacturing.

"We believe it's not enough to just measure and manage - disclosure is really the most important piece of the sustainability commitment," Octal sustainability project manager Mohammed Razeem said.

Octal also uses Mosaic, a carbon accounting tool from Renewable Choice. Mosaic automates the carbon accounting process, replacing the manual work of spreadsheets with a web-based tool. Switching to Mosaic from the manual process has saved OCTAL time and money, Razeem said.

"We were trying to measure emissions using an overly complex enterprise carbon accounting system and found the project too costly and time consuming. In one month, Mosaic accomplished more than we had in a year," he said.

When it comes to those in plastic packaging that want to adopt sustainability practices, Wood said there is no blueprint to follow because the process is different for all companies.

"One of the main components is that it needs to be profitable because you can't make a change that isn't fundamentally going to make a company profitable," he said. "Companies need to understand what constraints they are under, along with what opportunities are out there."