The Labels and Packaging Materials division of US film and label specialist Avery Dennison (Glendale, California; www.averydennison.com) is partnering with compatriot Tosca (Atlanta, Georgia; www.toscaltd.com), which offers CO₂ supply chain reductions through the management, distribution, and servicing of reusable plastic product containers (RPC).

As part of the collaboration, Tosca said it plans to handle a substantial portion of Avery Dennison’s product distribution across its factories and distribution centres in the EU and UK in a switch to reusable plastic pallets. Tosca predicts Avery Dennison can save 819 t/y of carbon emissions by switching all of its 1200x800 mm Euro-sized wooden pallets to the Tosca RPC.

The partnership is to involve implementation of Tosca’s pooling model in which the company delivers clean, empty pallets from its European service centres to Avery Dennison sites on the continent. Tosca recovers the pallets at participating Avery Dennison downstream customer sites, then inspects and washes the RPCs according to ISO 22000 food safety standards, it said and added that the RPCs can be re-used over 100 times then recycled at the end of life.

Avery Dennison has successfully trialled the Tosca pooling programme at its Dublin, Ireland, distribution centre for almost a year. Tosca issues a carbon emissions reduction certificate to Avery Dennison and its network of participating partners in the programme.