Green Packaging: What Makes Sustainable Packaging
Product sustainability is becoming more and more essential in consumer purchasing decisions. Customers are interested in the life cycle assessment of the corresponding items and their packaging. Therefore, aspects such as climate neutralization and carbon dioxide emission reduction also play an increasingly important role in box transportation. Consumers want to learn about environmentally friendly packaging. We will show you what you need to look for in sustainable packaging materials.
Bio-based packaging, biodegradable packaging or compostable packaging?
Many names are used when discussing sustainable packaging materials, including bio-based, compostable, and biodegradable. For example, you can find them in plastic packaging. For an overview, it is essential to distinguish terms.
Bio-based: If the material is entirely or partially composed of renewable raw materials such as wood, we are talking about “bio-based.” Appropriate biological packaging is not necessarily biodegradable packaging. For example, furniture manufacturers often use plastics made of wood chips and composite materials, not biodegradable. On the other hand, disposable dishes made of starch meet “biobased” and “biodegradable” standards.
Biodegradable: According to the German Institute for Standardization (DIN) regulations, substances are biodegradable if they can be degraded by microorganisms such as bacteria. It does not matter how long the decomposition process takes. Various plastics are difficult to recycle, so they are more unsustainable than other plastics. A unique form is an oxidatively degradable material, which consists of fossil fuels and substances that decompose under the influence of light. However, the resulting microplastics have drawn repeated criticism from environmental organizations.
Compostable: once a substance is biodegradable under certain conditions and within a certain period, people call it “compostable”. There is a difference between industrial plants and garden compost. For the first, the plastic must decompose in a maximum of 12 weeks at 60 degrees. For garden compost, compostable materials or containers are sufficient to deteriorate at 30 degrees within a year.
Eco-Packaging: The Ecological Balance of Different Types of Packaging
The sustainability of packaging depends mainly on its materials. Manufacturers must comply with national and European regulations, such as packaging laws. Although there are different ecological balances in individual material groups, such as plastic, according to its composition, it still gets the following primary classification from “very sustainable” to “barely sustainable”:
1. No packaging: where there is no packaging, there is no emission. Or obstacles in the process of disassembly. However, it is almost impossible to provide an utterly unpackaged product.
2. Reusable packaging: the more times it is used, the better the ecological balance. For example, recyclable PET bottles can save 20 fillings, reducing emissions and the cost of producing several new bottles.
3. Paper and cardboard: As appropriate and environmentally friendly packaging is made of wood as a renewable raw material and is easy to recycle, the ecological balance is positive even if a lot of water is required for production.
4. Bioplastics: Plastics can be composed of renewable raw materials, for example, if the sheet is made of corn starch. However, corn cultivation is usually not organic but based on large-scale monocultures.
5. Ordinary plastics: Due to the scarcity of crude oil, plastics made from fossil raw materials such as polymers, polycondensation or additional polymers have ecological problems. Using recycled plastic pellets or reusable packaging improves the environmental balance, at least to some extent. Even if you use sustainable packaging materials, you must consider maximizing recycling or minimizing carbon dioxide. The two generally don’t work together. In addition, which products are packaged, which filling technology is used, and the logistics structure play an essential role in the packaging strategy.
Life cycle assessment: recyclable packaging and long shelf life are the main factors.
As a general rule of life cycle assessment, the simpler the packaging structure, the more precise the life cycle assessment is. As one of the earliest packaging retailers on the market, Ratioform relies on straw paper as an innovative, sustainable and renewable packaging material. The many kinds of straw paper products we have selected provide an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional paper and cardboard, so they are very fashionable.
Read our blog on Greenwashing – what is behind the phenomenon?
