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, and there is no way to add transport packaging to it afterwards without recreating it.
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.
Exit points
Every item of transport packaging leaves your system somewhere, and that place decides how it is treated. This is the exit point:
- Unpacking site: 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.
- Consumer: the item reaches the consumer and is treated as consumer waste.
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.