Business strategies to improve the environmental performances: life-cycle approaches and tools in Aptar Italia

This article aims to present and discuss the experience conducted by Aptar Italia regarding the implementation of life-cycle based approaches and tools within their own organization and to describe how such experience has been spreading at corporate level. Aptar Italia produces micro-pumps and dispensers for liquids and is a world leader in the dispensing solutions niche of the packaging industry for beauty and home, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage. Aptar has been involved for several years in sustainability aspects, with special focus on environmental and energy issues and is currently considered a sectoral benchmark on those issues. The experience that it has gained, as well as the route taken can be an example and stimulus for other companies and can provide theoretical, methodological and practical feedback to the community of scholars in the life cycle management field. The analysis conducted during this study highlights the basic reasons, the strategic levers, the most significant steps, the results achieved during more than ten years to improve environmental performances, as well as the related future goals. The activities undertaken are shown temporally in two phases -- i) “mapping” the state of the art of the product system, and ii) “acting” to achieve better performances -- and also according to the area of interest. For each action described, its current state of development (i.e. planned, in progress, implemented) is also reported. The mapping activity includes the results of various steps: an initial cradle-to-gate LCA on a sample product, then extended to other items; the development of simplified tools for the dynamic assessment of the environmental impacts of transports, materials and energy use; the analysis of end of life scenarios of their products, based on EU-wide databases. Improvement actions conducted in recent years and here reported have affected different aspects of the company structure, including: organizational and managerial actions (ISO 14001 for EMS and ISO 50001 for EnMS); research actions: (Partnership with Pescara University: “Aptar Italia awards” and Industrial PhD); plant actions (energy efficiency); product actions: (materials and weight optimization, logistic aspects); wastes and scraps actions (reuse and recycling, internal Landfill Free certification); supply chain actions (intermodal project for logistics and LCA on full aerosol packaging); marketing and communication actions: (labels such as ISO 14025 EPD, ad CDP and GRI reports). These actions have enabled Aptar Italia to become a forerunner for the entire group. At present, there is an ongoing plan for the replication of their model in other corporate facilities in the EU and the USA. This article also describes how this plan has developed and the difficulties encountered in its implementation. An interesting aspect that emerges is the "bottom-up" way by which such virtuous practices have been spreading within this organization. Finally, this paper highlights the main benefits achieved, the critical issues faced during this path and the future developments of their sustainability strategy