Liberty Intercept Blog

An unfortunate and "significant spill in the context of annual amounts of oil spilt in the North Sea" is still leaking. It's a very small spill compared to the one in the Gulf of Mexico, nevertheless, each spill has environmental consequences. We don't look to place blame; things happen, it seems like only a matter of time before one drilling site or another has a mishap. It's a difficult and complicated business, no doubt.

If you tax consumers for an item or service, you might expect them to use that item or service less to avoid paying tax. Unfortunately, the effect of Hong Kong's tax on plastic shopping bags has caused a 25% increase in the use of plastics since the levy began two years ago in July, 2009. Rather than reuse plastic shopping bags as trash bags, people have been purchasing reusable non-woven polypropylene bags for shopping and heavier-duty plastic trash bags for the purpose of garbage disposal, accounting for the increase in plastics usage.

Need some new ideas for recycling at home? Here are some of the ways we reuse and recycle materials:

1. Cut the legs and seat of worn out sweatpants into squares or rectangles for washing the car, dusting furniture, wiping the bathroom mirrors, cleaning windows, or whatever other cleaning chore you have. Worn bath or dish towels can serve the same purpose - all can be machine washed until they're no longer useful.

Over the course of several chats with the head of the Intercept Technology Group, Keith Donaldson (video series to be released soon), we learned about the groundbreaking work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer and consultant. Dr. Deming had many skills, including electrical engineering, playing the drums, singing, and writing sacred music. His legacy is impressive, especially his work developing new quality control protocols for manufacturing.

When it comes to packaging, you have a lot to consider. Materials, design, cost, and all kinds of other considerations come into play when deciding which types of packaging would best suit your needs. When you're shipping metal parts and other costly items, or when you're looking for packaging that offers corrosion resistance, resistance to moisture, and/or product and worker-safe solutions, you have even more considerations to make.

Bringing a new product to market requires a great idea that fulfills a need, as well as the perfect packaging to convey your message in succinct and appealing fashion to your target audience. Given the plethora of vendors, materials, design options, legislation, and environmental issues to be considered,  packaging a product can be a daunting and expensive task. The value of experience to achieve success cannot be minimized.

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers is a group that supports manufacturing through the sharing of information, connections via local chapters and technical communities, trade-show style events, publications and more. Boasting a global reach of over half a million and spanning all manufacturing industries, SME is an important player in influencing new technology, particularly in the fields of aerospace and defense, medical, motorized vehicles, and clean energy.

The word “sustainable” means many things to many people. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition provides a common vision and a framework of guidelines toward the improvement of packaging. According to the SPC, their definition has been widely adopted throughout the packaging industry.

Manufacturers looking to contain costs often consider outdoor storage for unused items: large machinery and vehicles are often stored outdoors so precious warehouse space can be reserved for other items. With the right packaging, outdoor storage is the perfect cost-saving solution for many companies.

"The food packaging industry can make a valuable contribution to reducing the wastage of food. Appropriate packaging strategies help to protect food along the value chain and to make food available to more people. Packaging preserves food, protects it from physical damage and temperature influences and makes it transportable.” At the recent Interpack 2011 trade event in Dusseldorf, Germany Christian Traumann, president of the event and chief financial officer of Multivac, acknowledged the issue of food waste as one of the most pressing problems we face worldwide.