Packaging is everywhere. Most packaging consumes a considerable amount of resources and energy during production and transportation. Even to produce 1 ton of cardboard packaging, which is considered "more environmentally friendly" by many consumers, requires at least 17 trees, 300 liters of oil, 26,500 liters of water and 46,000 kW of energy. These consumable packages usually have a very short useful life, and most of the time they will enter the natural environment due to improper handling and become the cause of various environmental problems.
For packaging pollution, the most immediate solution is to advance sustainable packaging, that is, the development and use of packaging that is recyclable, reusable, and made from rapidly renewable resources or materials. With the enhancement of consumer groups' awareness of ecological protection, improving packaging to reduce the ecological footprint of products has become one of the social responsibilities that enterprises must undertake.
What is sustainable packaging?
Sustainable packaging is more than using eco-friendly boxes and recycling, it covers the entire lifecycle of packaging from front-end sourcing to back-end disposal. Sustainable packaging manufacturing standards outlined by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition include:
· Beneficial, safe and healthy for individuals and communities throughout the life cycle
· Meet market requirements for cost and performance
· Use renewable energy for procurement, manufacturing, transport and recycling
· Optimizing the use of renewable materials
· Manufactured with clean production technology
· Optimizing materials and energy by design
· Recoverable and reusable
According to a recent survey by international consulting firm Accenture, more than half of consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable packaging. This article introduces 5 innovative sustainable packaging designs for you. Some of these cases have gained a certain degree of acceptance in the consumer market. They show that sustainable packaging does not have to be a burden. Under the circumstances, sustainable packaging has the potential to sell well and expand brand influence.
Packing a Computer With Plants
The outer packaging of electronic products is mostly made of polystyrene (or resin), which is not biodegradable and can rarely be recycled. In order to solve this problem, many companies are actively exploring the use of biodegradable plant-based packaging Materials for innovative research and development.
Take Dell in the electronics industry as an example. In recent years, in order to promote the wide-scale use of biodegradable innovative materials, Dell has launched bamboo-based packaging and mushroom-based packaging in the personal computer industry. Among them, bamboo is a plant that is tough, easy to regenerate and can be converted into fertilizer. It is an excellent packaging material to replace pulp, foam and crepe paper commonly used in packaging. More than 70% of Dell's laptop packaging is made from bamboo imported from China's bamboo forests that comply with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) regulations.
Mushroom-based packaging is more suitable as a cushion for heavier products such as servers and desktops than bamboo-based packaging, which is more suitable for lighter products such as laptops and smartphones. The mushroom-based cushion developed by Dell is a mycelium formed by putting common agricultural waste such as cotton, rice, and wheat husks into a mold, injecting mushroom strains, and going through a growth cycle of 5 to 10 days. This production process can not only reduce the use of traditional materials on the basis of strengthening the protection of packaging for electronic products, but also facilitate the faster degradation of packaging into chemical fertilizers after use.
Glue replaces six-pack plastic rings
Six-pack plastic rings are a set of plastic rings with six round holes that can connect six beverage cans, and are widely used in Europe and the United States. This kind of plastic ring is not only related to the problem of production and discharge pollution, but its special shape is also very easy to get stuck in the body of animals after it flows into the sea. In the 1980s, 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals died each year from the six-pack plastic rings.
Since the dangers of this plastic packaging were raised, various famous beverage companies have been trying to find ways to make the plastic rings easier to break down over the years. However, the decomposed plastic is still plastic, and the decomposable plastic ring is difficult to solve the pollution problem of its plastic material itself. So in 2019, Danish beer company Carlsberg unveiled a new design, the "Snap Pack": It took the company three years and 4,000 iterations to create an adhesive that was strong enough to hold the The six-tin cans are held together to replace traditional plastic rings, and the composition does not prevent the cans from being recycled later.
Although the current Snap Pack still needs to be equipped with a "handle" made of a thin plastic strip in the middle of the beer can, this design still has a good environmental effect. According to Carlsberg's estimates, Snap Pack can reduce the use of plastic packaging by more than 1,200 tons per year, which not only helps reduce plastic waste, but also effectively reduces Carlsberg's own production carbon emissions.
Turning ocean plastic into liquid soap bottles
As we've mentioned in previous articles, 85% of beach litter worldwide is plastic waste. Unless the world changes the way plastic is produced, used and disposed of, the amount of plastic waste entering aquatic ecosystems could reach 23-37 million tons per year in 2024. With the discarded plastics piling up in the ocean and the constant production of new plastic packaging, why not try using marine litter for packaging? With this in mind, in 2011, American detergent brand Method created the world's first liquid soap bottle made from ocean plastic waste.
This plastic liquid soap bottle comes from a Hawaiian beach. The brand's employees spent more than a year personally participating in the process of collecting plastic waste on Hawaiian beaches, and then worked with recycling partner Envision Plastics to develop a plastic recycling process. , to engineer marine PCR plastics of the same quality as virgin HDPE and apply them to retail packaging for new products.
At present, most of Maize's liquid soap bottles contain recycled plastics to varying degrees, of which 25% come from ocean circulation. The brand's founders say making plastic packaging out of ocean plastic may not necessarily be the ultimate answer to the ocean's plastic problem, but they believe it's a step in the right direction that there is a way to get plastic already on the planet. reused.
Cosmetics that can be restocked directly
Consumers who habitually use the same brand of cosmetics can easily save up a lot of identical plastic packaging. Since cosmetic containers are generally small in size, even if consumers want to reuse them, they can't think of any good way to use them. "Since cosmetic packaging is for cosmetics, let it continue to be loaded." American organic cosmetics brand Kjaer Weis then provided a sustainable packaging solution: refillable packaging boxes & bamboo skincare packaging.
This refillable box can cover multiple product types such as eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, foundation, etc., and is easy to be disassembled and repacked, so when consumers run out of a cosmetic and make a repurchase, it is no longer necessary. You need to buy a product with a new packaging box, but you can directly buy the "core" of cosmetics at a cheaper price, and put it in the original cosmetic box by yourself. In addition, on the basis of the traditional metal cosmetic box, the company also specially designed a cosmetic box made of degradable and compostable paper materials. Consumers who choose this packaging can not only refill it, but also don’t have to worry about it. Pollution when throwing it away.
When promoting this sustainable cosmetic packaging to consumers, Kjaer Weis also pays attention to the expression of selling points. It does not blindly emphasize environmental protection issues, but combines the concept of sustainability with the "pursuit of beauty" represented by cosmetics. Fusion conveys a value concept of "people and the earth share beauty" to consumers. Of course, the most important thing is that it provides consumers with an absolutely reasonable reason to buy: cosmetics without packaging are more economical.
Consumers' choice of product packaging is changing little by little. How to grab the attention of consumers in the new era and tap new business opportunities by improving packaging design and reducing waste is a question that all enterprises must start to think about at present, because , "Sustainable development" is not a temporary popular element, but the present and future of brand enterprises.
Post time: Apr-18-2023
