On the implementation of reusable packaging to reduce the environmental impact - The Toyota case

This paper illustrates the activity carried out at TOYOTA MOTOR EUROPE, a Japanese company, world leader in the carmaker sector, based in Brussels, Belgium. The object of the study is to analyse the technical and economic feasibility of implementing a returnable packaging system with the aim of making the Export logistics function more competitive and reducing its environmental impact. The paper therefore analyse in parallel the economic feasibility of the implementation and the analysis of changes in the environmental impacts of the studied functions. The economic analysis is focused in general on the study of all the company functions involved and in particular on the economic changes due to the reduced purchase of packaging components and the changes in transport costs resulting from their optimisation. In fact, the introduction of returnable modules, characterised by a constant tertiary packaging volume, obliges the company to mix different products within the single module in order to make the best use of the internal volume. The environmental analysis, on the other hand, is focused on quantifying the savings in terms of KgCO2e resulting from the reduction of the components used for packaging, and the consequent reuse, and from changes in the volumes and weights transported. While the environmental benefit of reducing packaging components was certain, the transport impact of introducing these heavy plastic modules was not. From an economic point of view, the need to purchase fewer components added to the volumetric reduction resulting from optimisation of the loads has made it possible to obtain considerable economic advantages in variable costs and transport, making the investment fully sustainable and profitable. From an environmental point of view, the great benefits resulting from the reduction of packaging components have been partially reduced by the negative impact caused by the considerable increase in weight of the shipments made. Despite this, the gains in environmental terms were considered satisfactory and not negligible. In addition to these quantifiable and direct advantages, there were a series of indirect benefit deriving from the use of a product-packaging system that is much more evolved than the outdated pallet. Certainly a future logistics trend, this study confirmed the enormous potential that these modern reusable packaging offer. Furthermore, given the scale of the functions and processes analysed, it has opened the way to further optimisations resulting from the implementation itself.