Avery Dennison empowers brands with real-time carbon analytics and waste elimination tool

24 Mar 2022 --- Avery Dennison is introducing a real-time carbon impact analytics tool to its digital atma.io platform, empowering brands to meet net-zero targets and reduce waste across the supply chain.

The tool provides brands with data-driven insights on their product’s carbon footprint, including Scope 3 emissions and beyond. It captures data from every stage of a product’s journey, from raw material to consumer, and can help firms comply with the forthcoming EU “Digital Product Passport” regulations and existing US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

“With this latest update, we are accounting for the production- and distribution-related impact, which also includes the aspect of recycled content. Our calculation models have the ability to incorporate additional impact aspects and with the growing adoption amongst our customer base, we are getting more and more insights also into the end-of-life aspect,” Michael Goller, technical director for atma.io at Avery Dennison Smartrac, tells PackagingInsights.

“One of the main challenges in creating reliable carbon analytics is the fact that there is no standardized, widely accepted model to rule them all yet at the level of granularity that we are operating.”

“Consequently, it is important that our customers have true flexibility in parameterizing the calculation model such that it truly reflects their way of accounting for carbon impact to make claims that are not just scientifically and legally sound, but also well received and understood by consumers.”

Over 22 billion items are currently managed by the atma.io platform across the apparel, retail, food, and healthcare segments. Six of the top 20 apparel brands globally by revenue and four of the top 10 quick-service restaurants use the platform.atma.io provides customers with valuable insights vital to their ESG commitments.

Item level insights
The new atma.io Spring 2022 release focuses on environmental sustainability and waste elimination, following the platform’s recent win in the FDA food traceability challenge and the announcement of its partnership with Higg.

Third-party manufacturing environmental impact data, including those provided for the apparel industry by the Higg Index, factors into product carbon impact analysis. This data is then used alongside atma.io’s artificial intelligence to deliver verifiable end-to-end visibility of the brand’s emissions at an item level across the supply chain.

The atma.io Real-time Waste Elimination Tool uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze and alert on anomalies and inefficiencies across the supply chain. This analysis includes information about the overdue movement of products at a pallet level or even isolated individual items within a warehouse that are close to perishing or otherwise lost.

These features help ensure action can be taken quickly and proactively to improve the efficiency of brands’ supply chains, minimize product loss and provide adequate stock to meet customer demands. According to UN estimates, a third of the world’s food is either lost in the supply chain or wasted at the retail, foodservice and household level, equating to around 1.3 billion tons per year. 

The item level data will provide customers with valuable insights vital to their ESG commitments, says Avery Dennison. For example, by identifying items such as food or pharmaceutical products that have been held longer in a distribution center, are nearing expiry, or have a temperature variance, the platform can produce alerts to help mitigate those risks, including minimizing spoilage, reducing loss, waste and greenhouse gas emissions, and in turn maximize sales.

“When we launched atma.io one year ago, our vision was to connect the physical and digital worlds by giving each physical item a unique digital ID, providing end-to-end transparency across the supply chain. Every second, 300 new items are added to atma.io and join the billions it already manages,” explains Max Winograd, vice president for connected products at Avery Dennison Smartrac.The tool provides brands with data-driven insights on their product’s carbon footprint, including Scope 3 emissions.

“We live in an ever-changing, data-driven world where constant access to timely, accurate insights is key to driving productivity and [environmental] sustainability goals. The atma.io Spring ‘22 release will empower businesses to get meaningful insights from data that has often been in silos, allowing them to make informed decisions in real-time that can dramatically transform their business agility and accelerate their performance across the bottom line, people, planet and profit.”

Atma.io’s new features:

1. Sustainability Facility Assessments and Expiration Callouts – in partnership with third-party sustainability organizations such as Higg, atma.io assigns a manufacturing environmental sustainability score for supported facilities within the supply chain. This score bolsters the data already available via the Carbon Impact Analytics feature. Callouts can also be created to help keep track of partners’ environmental sustainability assessments’ expiration dates. 
2. Global Inventory Trace – tracks inventory on SKU and purchase order level along the supply chain, revealing how inventory items are distributed over the entire supply chain per site type (for example, factories, warehouses, stores), and creates alerts for items that are on-site longer than the expected dwell-time, adding to the waste elimination features outlined above.
3. Anomaly Detection – generates alerts regarding suspicious activities happening within inventory. These alerts can include possible counterfeit items in the supply chain or items that have traversed along the supply chain unexpectedly.
4. Purchase Order Tracking – helps enable organizations to automate purchase order management and ensure proof of provenance for associated inventory.

“‘You can't manage what you can't measure’” goes the old but famous quote. With the current release we have laid the foundation to accurately measure and analyze the different aspects of the value chain and provide in-depth analytics,” continues Goller.

“Our current efforts are building on this foundation to provide our customers with tangible ways of actually managing and changing what is happening in the supply chain: from simple operational improvements to more profound and strategic measures that will help our customers to achieve savings and [environmental] sustainability through traceability.”

Avery Dennison indicates atma.io will continue to add new features and unlock even more value by connecting products to the platform.

Last year, the company partnered with The Future Laboratory consultancy on a zero-waste roadmap.

By Joshua Poole