In today’s era of increasing environmental consciousness, sustainable packaging is becoming a hot topic. As a brand owner, you have a responsibility to provide consumers with outstanding products and to do so in a manner that minimizes harm to our planet. This is especially true if your brand is publicly eco-conscious. To ensure your products’ packaging reflects your business’s values, check out these tried-and-true sustainable packaging tips for eco-friendly brands.
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Choose Sustainable Materials
Utilizing eco-friendly materials is the most obvious—and the most essential—aspect of sustainable packaging. Sustainable materials are good for the planet and immediately visually reflect your business’s values to customers who receive your products. As a bonus, customers who can see tangible results of your eco-conscious efforts are more likely to become repeat customers, demonstrating the strong relationship between packaging design and brand loyalty.
One popular sustainable packaging material is anything recyclable, such as paper, cardboard, biodegradable plastics, and other materials made from plant-based resources. For example, Who Gives a Crap is an eco-friendly toilet paper company that uses 100 percent recycled paper for its packaging. Because of this, they can save on energy, water, and greenhouse gas emissions by avoiding the production of new materials in packaging.
Minimize Packaging Waste
Reducing packaging waste is another vital factor in eco-friendly brand practices and minimizing waste in your warehouse as a whole. The easiest way to reduce packaging waste is to make your packaging as minimalist as possible. To do this, examine each product and evaluate the necessity of all accompanying materials. Eliminate anything that is not essential or condense what is excessive. For example, how many biodegradable packing peanuts do your boxes really need? Likewise, are your boxes too large for your products?
Next, consider designing packaging with multiple uses. By creating packaging that customers can reuse or repurpose, you can incorporate a more circular economy model into your business operations.
Avoid Mixing Materials
Environmental friendliness is about more than just using eco-friendly products. Mixing materials can make recycling difficult or impossible due to various methods being necessary to break down each material successfully.
To ensure easy recycling of your packaging, adhere to the following principles:
- Use homogenous materials: Using a single material for packaging enables effortless recycling. For instance, an all-paper packaging design is easy to consolidate and recycle.
- Avoid mixed-material composites: Some materials, such as Tetra Pak, contain multiple layers of different materials that are fused together. Recycling these materials is complex and requires special efforts, so avoid them if you can.
Encourage Recycling
Lastly, facilitating recycling efforts within your company and customer base is essential. By informing and educating your target audience about the recyclability of your packaging, you can influence a larger ecological footprint through their actions.
Make it easy for customers to identify recyclable packaging components, and clearly request that they recycle your packaging if it’s not reusable. You can also collaborate and support local recycling initiatives, increasing the likelihood of recycled materials being put to good use.
A great example of a company that encourages recycling is LUSH Cosmetics. The company encourages customers to return five empty LUSH pots, which it will then recycle for them. In return, customers receive credit or a free face mask.
Following sustainable packaging tips for eco-friendly brands isn’t just about choosing the right materials; it’s about embracing waste reduction, ensuring recycling-friendly packaging, and involving your customers in the recycling process. Implement these tips for your brand today!
