Bulk Packaging for Consumer Electronics Products as a Strategy for Eco-efficient Transportation

By postponing the packing of consumer electronics (CE) products into their final consumer package, un-til after long-distance transportation, substantial eco-nomic savings and environmental improvements can be achieved, due to higher efficiency during trans-portation. In such a case, long-distance transporta-tion is done in multiple or bulk packages. Literature presents only a limited number of examples of bulk packaging for CE goods, all with the goal of eco-nomic savings obtained through maintaining flexibil-ity in the supply chain. The logic of environmental improvement by using bulk packaging is based on including transport efficiency as a criterion in the en-vironmental assessment of packaging concepts. This is a new approach as until now literature and prac-tice in eco-design of packaging have focused on re-source conservation and recycling. Bulk packaging can be applied in different ways. Which way is most successful depends on the type of product, the mode of distribution, the transportation distance, the size of the production run and the prices of material and labor. This paper investigates the conditions for suc-cess of bulk packaging and works towards a method-ology for comparing single-set packaging with sev-eral bulk packaging options, in order to determine when and how bulk packaging leads to an environ-mental improvement and a competitive advantage. KEYWORDS Packaging postponement, product distribution, eco