Valpak's Environmental Product Information Centre (EPIC) database is the largest packaging database in the UK. Liv Candy highlights what information it holds and how it can be analysed to make a change to packaging in the industry.
Valpak has been collecting data on behalf of our Data Insight clients for over 15 years utilising EPIC (Environmental Product Information Centre), our bespoke software specifically designed for data collection, manipulation, storage and reporting giving Valpak the largest packaging database in the UK. Product information & quantity data is loaded into EPIC throughout the year and additional information such as packaging weights & characteristics including polymers, recycled content & recyclability are sourced continuously to enhance this dataset.
EPIC includes over 22 million products with 2 million added to the database annually, covering numerous sectors including grocery retail, high street retail, fashion, DIY and wholesale/supply chain sectors giving us a completely unique dataset.
Utilising Valpak’s purpose-built Insight Platform our team can analyse and review EPIC data at the click of a button. The platform can easily report on elements of packaging such as:
You can see where problematic polymers exist in your product catalogue and where they are sourced from.
The platform helps simplify and centralise large volumes of data and leverage this to manage and report against varied criteria. It has the ability to benchmark information giving valuable insight across products and sectors.
The platform allows instant recyclability benchmarking against similar products on the market along with allowing you to drill down into where non-recyclable packaging is present. It also offers a carbon calculation to help understand a wider environmental impact of the packaging put on the market.
Valpak’s dataset has been used for many projects over the years to provide insight to government and academics as well as our membership and so provides the perfect platform to help answer the question:
How can we use our data to help make our customers’ packaging “greener and leaner”?
On 10-11 June Valpak will be running their very first packaging data themed hackathon – “Packathon” to answer this question! Three teams, filled with team members with varied expertise and knowledge in the field of packaging, industry and sectors. Watch this space to see what answers unfold.
If you think that our EPIC database holds information that can answer your business needs in making packaging change contact us on data.insights@valpak.co.uk
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this weblog represent those of the individual authors and not those of Valpak Limited or any other organisation.