The GPN was established in 1996 for the purpose of promoting environmentally friendly products and services through green procurement. The GPN has developed its network, gaining 2,847 member organizations as of September 2005. More than half of exhibitors of the Eco-Products 2005 join the GPN.
Concepts
Environmental efforts in eco-friendly food containers and packaging
Products
e.g. Ajinomoto, Co. - a major food and seasoning company:
The Eco-Index for Containers and Packaging
The company established its original index to make food products containers and packaging greener. In the index, six evaluation items are set to examine the environment-friendliness of containers and packaging, including efficient resource use, recycling and disposal adaptability, CO2 emissions and labeling.
Efforts in environmentally friendly containers and packaging include;
reducing weight of bottles by reducing the volume of materials such as glasses and plastics, which leads to reductions in resources use as well as CO2 emissions.
reducing the size of carton packs, which leads to a 55-ton reduction in annual paper use.
adopting biomass and/or biodegradable plastics for some packages
improving the designs of containers so users can easily compress them when disposing or separate recyclables and non-recyclables.
