The Role of Reusable Packaging Management in a Company’s Sustainability Strategy

The traditional linear economy model, characterized by a ‘take-make-dispose’ approach, is gradually giving way to a more circular economy, where products and materials are reused and recycled. In this context, managing returnable assets and reusable packaging assets, such as containers, barrels, drums, crates and bottles, is a great strategy for companies to not only become more sustainable but also eliminate overspending on stock.

However, tracking and tracing assets and packaging down the supply chain and back to the companies that initially use them is not without challenges. Achieving end-to-end visibility into the journey of each asset or each unit of packaging—including reverse logistics—used to be very difficult.

For one, maintaining a comprehensive record of every item as it navigates through its lifecycle was very complex, often based on manual and paper workflows. Data was prone to human error or not even being collected at all. Furthermore, information was not available in real time, which made it nearly impossible to proactively or reactively respond to adverse supply chain events, like loss, theft, unauthorized use, damage, and unexpected unavailability in a timely manner.

Luckily, more modern track-and-trace solutions, namely OPTEL’s reusable packaging management solution, are helping companies address the aforementioned challenges efficiently, providing new opportunities to monitor assets more efficiently than ever before.