Measuring RFID’s Environmental Benefits by Trees Spared

Jun 30, 2023While it's long been assumed that radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can reduce some carbon emissions by making supply chains and inventory more transparent and error-free, how to measure that benefit has been left up to the individual users. Every product, supply chain and use case varies, and the benefits from RFID need to be measured against the environmental cost of the technology's use, based on the raw materials in the tags and data usage, for instance.

A joint research program between Michigan State University (MSU)'s Axia Institute and Italy's RFID Lab at the University of Parma has developed a tool to measure the impact that RFID technology can have on environmental sustainability, according to each product, how it is shipped, how quickly it might expire, and its attributes such as size, transit distance and cold chain requirements. The partners are now making the tool available at no cost to companies considering deployments.

The goal, according to the two universities, is to help businesses decide the benefits of the technology, not only from an economic perspective but also from an environmental one, and to share that information with customers. The researchers conducted their own test, based on two sample products in the healthcare industry—pharmaceuticals and medical devices—and found significant benefits based on reduced carbon emissions, which they measured in the form of trees. One tree saved represents a specific amount of carbon emission spared, while one tree lost indicates a measurement of carbon release.

A pharmaceutical product, the research team found, when shipped in bulk throughout a year, could reduce its environmental impact by hundreds of trees. On the other hand, a single type of medical device shipped throughout the same year would save several dozen trees annually, prehospital, with the use of passive UHF RFID technology. The cost of employing RFID measured about one or two trees yearly for both scenarios.

Measuring RFID's Positive and Negative Impacts on the Planet

According to the research team, sustainability is often broken into three areas of focus: economic, social and environmental impacts. The first two categories have already been measured, they report—economic impacts in terms of return on investment (ROI), and social impacts based on details such as patient health improving due to medications being safe and non-expired. The research project is aimed at a measurement that has been more elusive to some: the environmental impact of RFID use, both positive and negative. In other words, the researchers explain, users can find out how much it will benefit or impact the planet if they deploy RFID for their specific application.

The Axia Institute, founded in 2013, is a value-chain research institute. The lab offers RFID testing and validation services and leverages a partnership with academic experts from MSU's College of Engineering, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and School of Packaging. Located in Midland, Mich., it provides third-party validation services for RFID tagging and technology use. Since 2020, the lab has been providing consultation risk research testing and validation of RFID technologies and RFID-tagged products. The institute has been concentrating on RFID use in the supply chains for healthcare, food, agriculture and advanced manufacturing, says Bahar Aliakbarian, the lab's director of research and development, who reached out to the University of Parma in 2022.

The research has been funded by Murata RFID, a Japanese firm that acquired a share of the University of Parma's spinoff company ID-Solutions in 2017. Through ID-Solutions, Murata RFID has partnered with the RFID Lab at the University of Parma since the beginning, according to Antonio Rizzi, a professor of logistics and supply chain management in the University of Parma's Engineering department and founder and head of the RFID Lab. The tool developed, Rizzi says, "is general-purpose, but has been applied to pharmaceuticals and medical devices in order to test outcomes," based on specific products and their supply chain. The group focused on two representative products in the healthcare industry: a suture stapler and a package of ibuprofen.

"We wanted to test, was there a benefit on the environment by using RFID?" Rizzi recalls. On one hand, the system measures the negative impacts of RFID tags, such as the materials, emissions and waste related to making, applying and using them, explains Giuseppe Vignali, an RFID Lab researcher and University of Parma professor. The positive impact was measured according to such benefits as reduced shrinkage, losses, decreased transportation caused by errors and stock reduction, and improved rates of reuse or recycling.

The participating companies, a drug manufacturer and a medical device firm, were already using RFID to track their goods. The research team applied the model of a typical product shipment based on the data from those companies, and they followed the ISO 14040 standard guidelines related to lifecycle assessment. "All the rules are related to the application of the lifecycle assessment," Vignali says, according to that standard.

Hundreds of Trees Saved According to Measurement

With the ibuprofen product, the team found that introducing RFID at the case level to manage the distribution chain would lead to a gain of approximately 700 trees' worth of environmental impact yearly, based on reduced expirations of product leading to disposal, as well as fewer mis-shipment. In addition, they found RFID could save 680 trees by reducing the incidence of lost items that would go missing in the supply chain and need to be replaced, as well as about 20 more based on eliminating additional trips for error-handling. For the medical device, the number of trees were measured at just nine, while a reduction in stock and losses each added another six, with five more gained based on reduced trips for error-handling.

The tags cost for both product types was approximately one tree. "We assessed all aspects of the supply chain," Vignali says, including the supply of raw materials used to make the tags, as well as the environmental cost of tag application on specific pharmaceutical products or devices, and the tags' transportation. "For each part of the supply chain, we consider both the impact and the savings, and finally the end of life of the tags." The medical device manufacturer, Rizzi adds, is now able to tell hospitals, "Thanks to the RFID technology, you can save 26 trees per year." The testing framework can be applied to all kinds of products, he notes, stating, "Our assessment has been tested in the pharma and healthcare supply chains, but it can be applied to any other items."

Products facing expiration dates or requiring cold storage may gain a more significant environmental improvement with the use of RFID, the testing indicates, due to the need for refrigeration and the high risk of waste. "We know there are some products that have an extremely higher impact," Rizzi says. Although he expected to see a significant impact on the environment with RFID, he recalls, "It was kind of astonishing to see the benefits that we can achieve compared to the impact of the RFID tags." The group is currently engaging with pharmaceutical companies and tag manufacturers to include other types of products in their testing, in order to further validate the tool.

According to Aliakbarian, the tool is available now at no cost. "We're not doing it for the money," she states. "We're doing it for people, and for the planet." She predicts companies will use the tool as a selling point. The fact that participating businesses were already using RFID, the researchers note, made it possible to access supply chain data that wouldn't have been available without the tag reads. RFID provided the visibility to test its own environmental impact, so the group benefitted from attaining extract data that has helped them measure its impact. "Thanks to the information, we were able to assess the impact of every single RFID tag applied to every single package."

In the future, the tool could test more sustainable tags' impact, such as paper labels or printed antennas, as opposed to aluminum. The researchers also plan to offer an online tool with which companies could input data into a landing page form to calculate their results. The system, the researchers explain, will bring clarity to the role RFID plays in improving sustainability. "You don't really know, until you've got the numbers in front of you, if there is an environmental benefit or not," Rizzi states. The framework is designed so any industry, product and supply chain can be applied to assess the global warming impact of tons of carbon dioxide side effects—and to do so in the form of trees.

 

Key Takeaways:

• The use of RFID has been measured to reduce the environmental impact of a product and its supply chain, based on the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of trees.
• The measuring tool is now available to companies to calculate RFID's impact on their products or supply chains as they deploy the technology, or beforehand.