How Is Sustainable Packaging Helping To Protect the Environment?

 

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With the progression of commercialization and the expansion into different parts of the world, it has become crucial to ensure that products are well preserved and stored to reach their destinations intact.

Then we saw the arrival of packaging and how it became indispensable in the daily life of humanity, being one of the main elements responsible for product protection.

The packaging protects and preserves the product from production to commercialization and consumption.

Maintaining its integrity and protecting the product from contamination by microorganisms or other infectious agents and from various transport and daily threats.

The Importance of Packaging

The importance of packaging is directly related to its function, that is, to deliver the product safely and with quality to the consumer.

In addition to protecting it, it also helps conserve the product. For example, some products like frozen items need help in freezing processes to withstand high or low temperatures and even increase the product’s shelf life.

It is an element that also facilitates the transport and storage of the product for both companies and consumers.

With modernization came practicality; it is easier to move products both in industrial and domestic environments with more sophisticated and resistant packaging without compromising the composition and structure of the product.

The Relationship Between Packaging and the Environment

In a nutshell, the environment is the place that allows life to happen.

Like my third-grade teacher used to say: the environment is everything around us.

That is Us, the Flora, and Fauna.

In the course of the development of humanity, with the industrialization and modernization, the number of damages in this environment has been gradually growing as a result of constant human interventions, to the point where we are no longer sure if we will find today’s world when we wake up in the morning.

In short, we have become the threat; we are the orchestrators of problems such as pollution, soil degradation, global warming, and many other things.

One of the ways in which we harm the environment around us is through our domestic waste, the third of which is composed of packaging, most of which are non-biodegradable, and production involves a high expenditure of energy and raw materials.

Packaging waste can cause the death of millions of birds and marine mammals. Pollution goes from its manufacture to its disposal by the final consumer.

The main problem comes from the composition of these packages; except for those made from paper and fabrics, packages made from metals, glass, or aluminum take more than hundreds of years to decompose.

Depending on how they are disposed of or not, if not for recycling, the accumulation of discarded packaging contributes to the depletion of sanitary landfills and other deposits, making it challenging to degrade other waste, not to mention the killing of animals and pollution of the landscape.

I will simplify the relationship between packaging and the environment in this way: as the demand for the product increases, its packaging production also rises. Alongside the consumption of natural resources and the amount of waste, it increases pollution and feeds the environmental problems increasingly present in the world.

Well, it is a lot to consume.

How Does Sustainable Packaging Help In Environmental Protection?

Sustainable packaging has contributed to reducing environmental impacts and preserving the environment; that is, they have come to try to save our tomorrow.

With the perspective of a sustainable world, sustainability has become a priority and goal of life; with that in mind, industries have made peace with the idea and duty of being ecologically correct, benefiting the environment, the consumer, and tomorrow.

Sustainable packaging is made of biodegradable materials, which quickly decompose in the environment. As they are entirely absorbed by nature, they do not leave residues, contributing to reducing environmental impacts.

There is also a lower expenditure of energy and low toxicity during the production process.

Photo by Marcell Viragh on Unsplash

To get an idea of the highly positive impact these packages have, we can go back to their predecessors, traditional packaging.

Let’s highlight the plastic ones that contain oil in their production.

They may seem harmless, but plastic is one of the biggest evildoers of the environment, capable of compromising terrestrial and aquatic fauna, as well as their habitats, contaminating and compromising water quality and soil fertility if disposed of incorrectly.

Moreover, they start harming the environment already in their manufacture, producing harmful by-products.

Sustainable packaging has come to replace these silent killers; they are produced from organic, biodegradable, or recyclable material.

I will explain how they protect the environment.

The secret is in their composition, which allows them to degrade naturally, synchronized with the environment in which they are found.

They do not affect ecosystems, as their decomposition is more accelerated and is carried out by natural microorganisms in the environment without compromising life cycles because their permanence is shorter than that of non-sustainable packaging.

The preservation and protection of the environment are fundamental for maintaining a healthy planet and the life that resides in it. Sustainable packaging is an essential step towards a more alive and progressive world.

The Change in a Packaging

With the awareness of eco-friendly products to protect the environment, customers have turned to mindful shoppers. In today’s time, the appropriate kind of packaging that has a negative or minimal impact on the environment will catch the eye of customers.

Better packaging builds a reputation in the market.

The small changes in brand packaging help the brand stay in the customer spotlight, which also helps build a more positive impact on the business and helps protect the environment.

Reusable and Recycled Packaging

Using the materials which are easy to reuse and later can be recycled.

• Packing the food items in a basket made of bamboo or rattan can be reused as a picnic basket or book storage.
• Introduce the cloth/jute pouch, which can be reused as storage for multiple things at home. For instance, packing shoes in a velvet clothing cover can act multipurpose.
• Packing the products in a wooden magnetic box which later can be used as storage. It not only looks rich, but it will automatically elevate your brand.

Photo by Carmen Alarcón on Unsplash

Reduce The Usage of Plastic

With the plastics materials staying intact for decades in a landfill, major industries are now trying to eliminate plastic usage in their packaging and replace it with reusable or recyclable materials.

For instance, replacing the plastic bubble wrap with honeycomb paper is made by layering and gluing the tissue papers or corrugated bubbles made of shredded corrugated.

Final Thoughts

Product Packaging plays an influential role in safely delivering the products. Slight changes in packaging will help you win the customer’s heart; also, you will contribute towards protecting the environment.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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