Benefits of Eco-Conscious, Sustainable Packaging

As your business grows, so do your packaging requirements. More the products sell, the more packaging material is used. This gives you an opportunity to use your packaging wisely to your advantage as well as your consumer’s. A third very important view would be using your packaging for the benefit of the whole world. After it has served its purpose, which is, deliver the product to the customer, Packaging of a product generally becomes waste. As a responsible citizen of the word, everyone including your business should be looking to reduce waste. If you are not already, you should be looking for sustainable packaging solutions. They be called environmental friendly, Eco-friendly or sustainable packaging, but the basic principle is same, that is to reduce the consumption of resources used for packaging the product. PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted a study to understand the impact of sustainable packaging on the industry. Detailed report can be read here. As per the report, the pressure for sustainable packaging will continue to increase on the industry. There will be regulations that the industry will need to follow to ensure sustainability. The industry also needs to be more proactive to define what makes a packaging sustainable and how the sustainability should be measured.

 

So, what is sustainable packaging?

While there is no single definition or description that is accepted globally, sustainablepackaging.org has tried to describe what constitutes sustainable packaging. The key elements of sustainable packaging are

 

  • It is safe & healthy.
  • It meets market criteria for performance and cost.
  • It optimizes the use of renewable or recycled source materials and uses renewable energy.
  • It is physically designed to optimize materials and energy required for manufacturing the packaging.
  • It is effectively recovered and utilized in biological and/or industrial closed loop cycles.

 

Sustainable packaging is not only socially desirable but has business advantage as well. Let’s look at some of the benefits of adopting sustainable packaging.

 

Marketing Advantage/Reputation Boost. This is the one that has direct impact on your top line. Businesses that use environmental friendly practices generally have more favourable image in the market place. Increasing number of consumers are becoming environmentally conscious. When a brand makes an investment in environment friendly practices, it not only boosts its image amongst existing customers, but also gains new customers who are concerned about the environment. When customers, see a firm making a firm commitment to the environment, they want to support that brand. Most of the environment conscious consumers are very active on social media and social media, today, is a very important marketing platform. Imagine the kind of free advertising that you will get when these people talk about your brand. Moreover, many NGOs and Government agencies publish list of preferred companies or highlight the companies that have demonstrated the commitment to sustainability. The consumer activists are always looking at these sources and share their leanings on social media. Moreover, the newer sustainable materials increase the shelf life of many products, keeping them fresh for longer. (think cling film for vegetables) Many customers feel less guilty throwing away the packaging as it is now sustainable and doesn’t contribute to pollution (at least not to a very high extend).

 

Reduced resource consumption. Increasingly the companies that use recycled or sustainable options for packaging are discovering that it also comes with an added cost advantage. It is one of the known facts that sustainable packaging focuses on recycled material which leads to reduced consumption of precious, non-renewable resources. Redesigning the packaging to use lesser material and more compact shape helps in further reducing the use of that material. The key objective here is to reduce overall resource consumption, by reducing the amount of packaging used and reducing the energy used to produce them. Compact shapes translate into lesser space used for transporting, translating into more products being transported for same space and thus reducing the fuel or transportation cost. Given these facts, the investors and analysts have started loving the sustainable packaging options.

 

Reduced Storage. As discussed when using sustainable packaging, one the key objective is to reduce the amount of packaging used. Smaller packaging means reduced storage requirements leading to smaller bins and smaller warehousing requirement. This leads to savings in logistics not only for the supplier but also for the consumer. (Consumers need smaller space in their homes to store the product). Subsequently, the sustainability also helps by increasing warehouse productivity and reduces labour costs. Sustainable packaging also helps in disposing off the empty packaging/packaging. Smaller packaging is always easier to dispose and not to forget, it is easily processed (being sustainable). This reduces the overall disposal cost of packaging material.

 

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Today, every business is required to do CSR activities. Be it reduced energy consumption in terms of heating, cooling or electricity, water, paper and other resources. Sustainable packaging furthers that cause and can be used to present the company as socially responsible one. You help reduce the carbon footprint of not only your company, but also that of your customers, your logistics providers and society at large.

 

Thus, sustainable packaging is a must that companies need to focus on; both for environment and their own benefit.

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