Wins Consecutive Green Supply Chain Award

—Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine recognizes ModusLink for designing sustainable, measurable and impactful new product packaging—

For the fourth year in a row, ModusLink Global Solutions™ Inc. has been honored by Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine’s 2012 Green Supply Chain Awards <http://www.sdcexec.com/article/10829171/supply-demand-chain-executive-announces-2012-annual-green-supply-chain-award-winners> . The Company was recognized for developing a creative and cost-saving package redesign for its client’s line of flash memory products.

In 2011, a global consumer electronics company and long-time ModusLink client requested assistance in reducing the amount of packaging material for its line of flash memory products, including USB and USB Mini devices, SD and Micro SD cards. This initiative was driven by both environmental and cost-savings goals, including reducing greenhouse gasses emissions, volume of packaging material, and logistics and shipping costs. With a completely redesigned package and an innovative approach to the product inserts and user manual, the electronics company was able to save money by eliminating excess materials and drastically reducing transportation costs. Specifically, the redesign resulted in:

 

• 50% cut in paper and fiber use and up to an 80% reduction with the smallest product

• 50% reduction in the amount of plastic used, while maintaining the integrity of the previous package

• 157% average increase in pallet density

• 45% reduction in shipping costs

 

Together, these improvements represent a 31% reduction in annual CO2 emissions, which equates to eliminating 74 metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere’.

 

“A key challenge that many companies encounter in their sustainability efforts is the difficulty that comes with changing business as usual,” said Lorcan Sheehan, senior vice president of marketing, ModusLink. “An example in this case was the entrenched belief that each product should be accompanied by a comprehensive product manual. Our packaging engineers worked to find an innovative solution that allowed for printing instructions directly onto the blister pack. We helped the client meet its aggressive sustainability goals by eliminating the separate manual, but also took into account the company’s need to ensure all necessary product information was readily available to consumers.”

 

The 2012 Green Supply Chain Awards spotlight the different sustainable approaches that global businesses take to cut costs, save time, drive revenue and improve their carbon footprint in the areas of product lifecycle management (PLM), order demand capture, sourcing, technology and integration infrastructure, procurement and other areas of the supply chain.

 

Additional Resources

• Read the latest blog post <http://blog.moduslink.com/bid/80602/Defining-Sustainability> exploring sustainability on Value Unchained <http://blog.moduslink.com/>

• Learn more about ModusLink’s extensive postponement and product configuration <http://www.moduslink.com/services/postponement> services

• Download the ModusLink Corporate Social Responsibility <http://www.moduslink.com/images/uploads/resources/ModusLink-CSR-2011-lores.pdf> report

• Follow us on Twitter @ModusLink <http://twitter.com/ModusLink>

 

Subscribe to our newsletter

Don't miss new updates on your email
Scroll to Top