Consumer packaging is what your customer takes home. Transport packaging is everything that gets the product there: pallets, cases, trays, shrink wrap, corner boards. It has its own end of life, and it usually does not happen where the consumer is.
Turning it on
Transport packaging is a choice made when the product is created: step 3 of creating a product asks whether to model the full packaging system. Say yes and the packaging controls described below appear on the product's life cycle. Say no and the product carries consumer-facing packaging only. You can change this later from Edit product details.
Levels
Transport packaging is modelled in levels, which describe how items nest. A tray holds units, a case holds trays, a pallet holds cases. Setting the level is what lets the calculation work out how much of each item one product carries: a pallet shared across 400 units contributes a four-hundredth of itself to each. A level can hold a single unit, for example one bag in a box.
Exit points
Every item of transport packaging leaves your system somewhere, and that place decides how it is treated. This is the exit point, set on each item under Where is this unpacked?:
- At a distribution location: the item is removed at a warehouse, distribution centre or store, which is where most transport packaging ends up. Waste treatment there is commercial, not household. Choose the Unpacking location(s) beneath it.
- At the consumer's home (final products only): the item goes home with the shopper, rides every leg to the consumer and is treated as household waste.
- It doesn't get unpacked here (intermediate products only): the item leaves your system still packed. No end of life is counted for it here, and the report discloses the open boundary.
- It isn't unpacked here and comes back to us (intermediate products only): the item leaves still packed and your customer sends it back empty.
For an intermediate product whose customer collects the goods still on the pallet and sends it back empty, choose It isn't unpacked here and comes back to us. It is counted as unpacked at the final destination. Its production and end of life are spread over the number of uses, and an empty trip back is added for each use.
The distinction matters because commercial and household waste streams recycle at very different rates, and using the consumer default for a pallet overstates what happens to it.
Custom end of life
Where you know how your transport packaging is actually treated, you can override the default split at the unpacking site rather than accepting the regional average. Enter the shares that apply to that item and they replace the default in the calculation.
The commercial regime at an unpacking site is a default, not a different formula. The same end-of-life calculation runs either way, so a custom split and a default split are directly comparable.
Reuse
Transport packaging is often used many times before it is discarded. The Number of uses setting spreads the item's production impact across its life: a pallet used 50 times carries a fiftieth of its manufacturing impact per trip. Leave it at the default if you do not know, and set it when you do.
Number of uses only applies to packaging that comes back: unpacked at a distribution location, or returned to you. Packaging that goes home with the shopper, or leaves without being unpacked, is single use, and it does not hold the product below 100% first-party data. Move an item to an exit point that does not come back and its number of uses is cleared; move it back and the default returns, marked Default.