As a global leader in minimally invasive health care technology, Arthrex continues on a pace to develop more than 1,000 new products each year, supporting our mission of Helping Surgeons Treat Their Patients Better®.
That same dedication to innovation is helping Arthrex reduce packaging size, cut fossil fuels usage and use fewer total plastics in product packaging.
“The three pillars of this cross functional effort are size reduction, cost and sustainability,” said Principal Packaging Engineer Mark Hill. Mark led the effort to create a standardized process to evaluate and determine which existing packaging for products to prioritize. Using specialized software to review each packaging component, the Packaging Engineering design team now runs a sustainability assessment on each redesign project.
“We have developed a tiered structure of customized reporting,” Mark said. “We can provide high-level metrics, or drill down into projects to show how we can substantiate our math. We now have monthly management reviews [from across the company] to determine where each project should fall in our pipeline.”
In Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24), the team reduced the amount of packaging on 10 Arthrex products, resulting in a nearly 63% reduction in cubic volume size, a more than 54% decrease in plastics use and a nearly 10% savings in packaging material costs. Currently, 28 other projects are in the works.
“This is an important effort to meet the needs of both the business and the environment,” said Senior Associate - Strategic Development Kyle Keperling. “We collaborated to assess what drives packaging sustainability. Ultimately, we focused on size reduction, the cost/benefit of each opportunity and the environmental impact. Our goal is to combine these priorities – using less material to create a more cost-effective package, which then takes up less space on a truck or a plane and ultimately saves both fuel and helps protect the environment.”
The effort to reduce packaging on those products in FY24 correlates to a 55% decrease in fossil fuels use, more than a 53% reduction in global warming potential and a nearly 55% decline in water consumption on those items.
Arthrex’s commitment to sustainability includes a plan to choose the most environmentally friendly materials and packaging components from the start of new projects.
“It’s practical, it’s the right thing to do and our customers are asking for this, too,” said Contract Management Director Jim Laville, whose group administers all customer-facing contracts for Arthrex. “Customers want to know that we are not only creating and delivering the best products, but that we are doing business in a sustainable and responsible manner.”
It’s all part of the company’s unique culture that is focused on continuous improvement and consistently raising the bar.
“Sustainability is a One Arthrex approach,” Mark said. “We are constantly striving to do business better, more efficiently and get our products to the market quicker, all while reducing our carbon footprint.”