Packaging

Packaging

Sustainable packaging is the development and use of packaging which results in improved sustainability. This involves increased use of life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle assessment (LCA) to help guide the use of packaging which reduces the environmental impact and ecological footprint.
Remove, Reduce, Recycle, Renew, Re-use. These are five of the original 7 R's of Sustainable Packaging. 
Nowadays sustainable packaging is slowing finding its way into the supermarkets. 

How to choose sustainable packaging:

  • Cut down on over packaging 

  • Use sustainable packaging materials such as mushroom packaging whenever possible

  • Recycling used packaging material with household items

Today, eCommerce makes up over 15% of all UK retail sales and retail giants like Amazon are sending out thousands of packages each day. Couriers like Courierpoint ship thousands of parcels every week. It is important to spare a thought for the environmental impact that poorly packaged items can have. It is common to find that when your box is delivered, there may be 1 or even 2 more boxes inside of the main box. This is called the Russian doll approach is generally caused through complete adoption of automated packaging and delivery systems.

 

This approach is certainly wasteful, but using polystyrene packaging peanuts also hurts the environment as it is estimated that they take around a million years to fully break down and degrade. If you want to help your company be more sustainability minded, a good place to start is to reduce the amount of packaging you use when shipping out to your customers.

Eco-friendly packaging is one of the best solutions to eliminating material waste in both the shipping and eCommerce industries. Many packaging boxes that are used to send items domestically and internationally can already be recycled as they are made from cardboard. Unfortunately this does not guarantee that the box will be reused or find its way to the recycling bin. For true sustainability, it is important that people understand that Eco friendly packaging materials should not be sent to a landfill. This can be achieved by labeling above bins and recycling points and general meetings.

Over recent years giant leaps in green innovation have transformed the food industry (among others), and packaging is on its way to doing the same. One sustainable company in particular stand out in their efforts to combat waste and make the packaging industry more sustainable at every level. They are Ecovative, and specialise in providing Eco friendly packaging materials that are made from one of nature’s finest food sources.

Mushrooms may not be the most obvious ingredient for sustainable shipping packaging, but Ecovative have multiple clients that feature in the Fortune 500 who will attest to the greatness of the material Ecovative produce. Their main focus as a company is on Mushroom Packaging, this is a substance that mimics Styrofoam but is completely green and helps to save the environment. Dell use this sustainable product to protect their 200lb servers during the delivery process.

 

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