Edson Perin
HP Brazil created a concept called HP on HP that aims to improve its sustainability through the Smarter Packaging Program (read more at HP’s smart packaging guarantees ink cartridge authenticity), with aggressive goals to reduce the carbon footprint, developing its own smart packaging. Who explains it is Diego Mutta, manager of reverse logistics and projects at HP Brazil, in an exclusive interview with IoP Journal (click to watch the video).
HP on HP reveals how HP applies its own technologies to bring sustainability aspects into the Smarter Packaging Program. “Sustainability has always been part of HP’s culture and strategy and today, more than ever, it is coming up with a series of new goals, with very aggressive goals to reduce the carbon footprint and increase the circularity of its products”, says Mutta.
According to the company executive, HP on HP is an initiative within the Smarter Packaging Program that works with digital printing technologies to manufacture HP’s own packaging. “Whether it’s packaging for printers, ink cartridges or computers, in which we seek to apply our digital printing technology”, he attests.
HP considers three focus of benefits. The first involves the cost reduction that is provided by replacing the conventional printing process with the gains of digital printing, such as, for example, on-demand packaging printing, eliminating waste. Another approach deals with what can be removed from the physical content of a package through digitization, such as product manuals. This action achieves sustainability as a whole, because its main benefit is the reduction of HP’s carbon footprint. “The change from conventional printing to digital already represents an immediate reduction of the carbon footprint, because it implies a lower consumption of energy and physical inputs”, emphasizes Mutta.
The third aspect, according to the HP executive, deals with how to optimize the customer experience, bringing the digital together with the physical, considering that the physical side will never cease to exist. “We thus add the digital experience to the physical world, bringing more solutions to our customer, whether in the form of videos, interactive documents or services, such as reverse logistics, which encompasses the benefits of the Circular Economy”.
Other companies, through HP partners such as Sincpress, can know and evaluate how to apply these technologies for their own benefit, in their own products, appropriating smart packaging developed for the digital process, with a reduction in carbon footprint, among other gains such as those mentioned above.
HP has been a pioneer in Brazil in the use of technologies for supply chain control, sustainability and customer experience for at least the last 20 years. The company’s investments in smart packaging – or Smart Packaging – range from the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in the brand’s printers manufactured in Brazil, ensuring 100% efficiency in its assembly lines and also in the delivery of products and their respective accessories, to the use of technology that digitally prints personalized codes on the boxes to carry out a closer communication with its consumers.
