Sustainable packaging: Solar powered packaging plant for Earth Friendly Products

“We are especially proud that our new facility in Addison will be the home of Illinois’ largest commercial solar-powered facility,” says Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, vp of Earth Friendly Products.  “This installation is a major step forward in Earth Friendly Products commitment to adding solar power at all five of our company’s regional facilities across the country.”

The installation cost the company approximately $275,000, but it is considered both a good ecological and business investment by Vlahakis-Hank. “The return on the investment for solar is terrific,” she remarks. “At our Garden Grove facility, where it’s already up and running, the savings are astronomic. We’ll get this investment back within four years.” 

The electricity will be used to power a myriad of manufacturing and packaging equipment inside the facility, including machines comprising its four filling lines. The day of PD’s visit, the company was packing its Ecos laundry detergent in 210 oz packaging created especially for Costco.  

Eco-chic for the masses

Ecos is a plant-based, ultra-concentrated laundry detergent with a built-in fabric softener. The company says the detergent is formulated with consumer savings in mind: It has a neutral PH to be gentler on clothing than competing products and is concentrated to require only 1 oz per high-efficiency load and 2 oz per regular load.

The company also makes a concerted effort to price its products, including Ecos, competitively. It can compete partly because the company keeps tight control on costs by bringing as many processes in house as possible. It even manufactures its own bottles. “Because we are the primary manufacturer, we can keep costs down,” Vlahakis-Hanks comments. “Other brands have an extra level of cost.”

Manufacturing its own bottles also enables the company to optimize them for the least impact on the environment. “If you look at most of our competitors, they are not using clear plastics,” Vlahakis-Hanks adds. “Natural products are going to have some changes in the color and appearance; these competitors are hiding those changes. With our packaging, you can see everything. This makes the plastic [used for our bottles] much more easily recycled than colored plastics.” 

Bottle filling

When these translucent HDPE bottles are ready to be filled, they are loaded manually onto the filling line. There, a Packaging Dynamics Model SLA-V8 positive displacement filler dispenses 210 oz of product into each container.

The filler incorporates Packaging Dynamics’ positive-displacement flow meter technology, which utilizes two rotating thermoplastic impellers that are driven by flowing liquid. Magnets embedded in these impellers activate a sensor that sends a pulsed signal back to the computer. This process enables the machine to achieve +/- 0.5 percent accuracy.

Packaging Dynamics president Daniel Lehmann says that this technology also allows accurate dosing without the need to recirculate excess product back to the supply tank after a measured fill.

Earth Friendly Products’ filler is fitted with an Allen-Bradley PanelView 300 operator terminal from Rockwell Automation Inc. The HMI has a monochrome transflective 2.87 x 1.67 in. LCD display with a LED backlight and is powered by PanelBuilder32 Software. 

The 32-bit software package has a development environment that aims to simplify application design, reduce development time, maximize performance and improve productivity. Standard tools, objects, graphics and imported bitmaps can be utilized to quickly and easily configure screens.

Capping and coding

Filled bottles travel to a capping station, where they are fitted with HDPE closures. The caps enter the line by traveling up an E-Pak cap elevator, which takes the closures from a bulk bin, orients the caps and transports them to the automatic capper.

A Videojet 1210 codes capped containers as they exit the capper. The ink-jet coder has several features designed to ease operation. Its print head automatically calibrates and cleans itself, and the coder is powered by a simple, icon-driven user interface. The 1210 is engineered to operate for 6,000 hours without requiring preventative maintenance, and its Smart Cartridge ink delivery system helps prevent spills during replacement. 

Labeling, case-packing

Coded, filled containers travel past a Tronics labeler, which applies flexo-printed pressure-sensitive labels onto the bottles. Line workers visually check bottles to ensure labels are applied correctly before placing the finished containers into manually erected, one-piece, corrugated cases.

These cases, supplied by Welch Packaging, are designed to reduce the bottlenecks that are often experienced when manually erecting cases. “Going with the one piece really cut down on the labor,” explains Earth Friendly Products GM Mike Marrese. “A lot of the companies will have the two piece case, and there’s a lot of labor putting it together.”

To further prevent bottlenecks, Earth Friendly Products will set up an end-of-line portable conveyor, supplied by Uline, that expands productivity by extending the case-packing area when the line is operated at higher-than-usual speeds.

Reusable pallets 

Workers manually build pallets of product as they fill the cases. Each pallet starts with a reusable wooden pallet, supplied by Chep. “What’s nice about the Chep pallet program is that the pallets are kept in circulation, we’re not getting new pallets,” Marrese remarks. “These pallets were brought to us; then they will go to Costco. [When Costco is done with the pallets,] Costco will call Chep to pick them up. These pallets are being reused, so you’re not cutting down trees to make new pallets.”

Forty-eight cases, weighing 30.8 lbs each, are placed on the pallet. Workers then place corner boards, supplied by All State Staple Co., onto a completed pallet before using a Wulftec stretch wrapper to secure the cases for transport.

Keeping it green   

The company extends its eco-conscious business practices to all departments within the facility, including its in-house print shop, which follows the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership guidelines.

“Everything printed here is on recycled or FSC-certified paper,” says Steve Oclon, pressman for Earth Friendly Products’ in-house printing department. “Additionally, we use a polyester plate system that keeps 100 percent of the silver coating on the plate for easier recycling. So we’re not putting any heavy metals in our waterways.

“When the plate is being processed inside a processor, the laser will hit the areas that black but the silver stays on the plate,” he adds. “With conventional film, you were washing it off in the fixer and now you have heavy metals in your water system. The plates also are easily recycled, and all chemistry, all the water, is recirculated and reclaimed.”

The computer-to-plate (CtP) system that Oclon is speaking of is a Heidelberg Quicksetter device that is used to image Mitsubishi plates. The plate-making system not only is a greener way to produce plates than its previous film-based system; it also is faster.

Previously, Earth Friendly Products’  art director Dennis Murray would create layouts then output thermal film. Oclon then would use this film to burn a printing plate. The multistep process would sometimes create production bottlenecks that would result in hours or even days passing between the time the designs were finalized and the plates were made.

Today, Murray can design a label for one of Earth Friendly Products’ private label customers and Oclon can be printing the label on the in-house two-color Ryobi press in the same day.

In-house design

Designing labels for contract packaging customers is just one of the many responsibilities that Murray has at Earth Friendly Products. He also is charged with working with the company’s multi-state design team on labels and promotional materials for all of the company’s own branded products.

Promotional materials are printed in house; but labels needing to be manufactured in high volumes, such as those applied to Ecos bottles, are printed flexo. Murray works with Earth Friendly Products’ flexo printing partners to produce the labels, and he’s been helping these partners with their own sustainability efforts.

“I’m in constant conversations with our flexo manufacturers on ways to get greener,” he remarks. “We’re testing substrate materials to see what’s more biodegradable. Then, there’s the issue of the inks used for flexo printing. They don’t quite match up [to our sustainable goals]. Within the next year or so, we’ll be able to say that we’re green on the flexo side.”

The first step in these efforts is the company’s core recycling program. “Right now, we are in a core recycling program,” he comments. “We keep our cores; we use them over and over again. “

Contract packing for like-minded companies

The external conversations don’t end with the flexo print providers. Earth Friendly Products is very selective about whom it will copack for and strives to work with eco-conscious brand owners only. Marrese remarks that every product manufactured by Earth Friendly Products, whether it is for its own brand or one of its contract packaging customers, has to meet its ‘green’ standards. 

In exchange for stringent adherence to Earth Friendly Products’ formulation standards, contract packaging customers can share in some of the company’s sustainability bragging rights, including the fact that the product was packaged in a facility with a solar-powered facility that further lowers its carbon footprint by making most of its purchases locally.

“Each of the five plants has a purchasing agent just for that particular plant,” says Vlahakis-Hanks. “We try to source everything locally.”

The company says that this practice not only consumes less shipping fuel, but it also brings tax and spending dollars into local economies. This fulfills another one of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals of supporting the middle class.

Green growth ahead

Its CSR strategy seems to be paying off in more than good will. While many other consumer packed goods are feeling the sting of the economic downturn, the company recently opened a new 50,000 sq-ft facility in Lacey, WA.