Environmental and economic evaluation of the household utility packaging process from the cleaner production approach

Waste generation in a process must be avoided for economic and environmental reasons, as waste is raw materials that did not become a product. In this sense, this work aims to evaluate opportunities for improvement through Cleaner Production (CP) to reduce the amount of BOPP packaging waste generated in the packaging process. Two packaging machines were studied (Flow Pack 84 and Flow Pack 07). From the on-site evaluation of the process in both machines, the main causes of waste generation were identified: breaking of the BOPP film, missing material, stuck material, misaligned material, and inadequate sealing. Flow Pack 84 also generated almost three times more packaging waste when compared to Flow Pack 07. Thus, CP actions were established to reduce or eliminate waste at the generating source. By installing a kind of a lung of the conveyor belt and two stop sensors in Flow Pack 84, it would be possible to eliminate waste generation from stuck materials. As for Flow Pack 07, the missing material does not depend on the machine, but on the quality of the material that is fed into it, so this problem must be resolved before the packaging process. The economic feasibility analysis showed that the investment made with these changes would be recovered in just over a year. Thus, packaging waste generation would be reduced by 63.4% in Flow Pack 84. In this way, the concept of CP shows that, with simple actions and without large investments, it is possible to minimize waste generation or even eliminate it at the generating source, even creating incremental innovations. It is extremely important to know the production process to evaluate the improvements. In this process, even by justifying that all waste generated is sold to recycling companies, this study showed that there is a greater economic and environmental return with the preservation of the raw material.