The Future of Sustainable Packaging

Businesses must look at the whole picture when deciding between paper and plastic. © Tony Skerl – stock.adobe.com

Many factors need to be considered to achieve net zero ambitions.

By Mike Jones, Head of Innovation at Mainetti

As the climate crisis rages on, with 2024 breaking records for extreme weather events from droughts to forest fires, sustainability has never been more important. With this in mind, businesses across industries are adapting their practices to reach their net-zero ambitions – particularly the packaging industry.

Vital to the operations of several industries, packaging is consumed on a mass scale all around the world. The result of this is a weighty environmental footprint, with an annual production of 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon emissions from the plastic sector alone, along with a third of production leaking into the environment as pollution. Sustainable packaging is therefore the next step in the evolution of the packaging sector to ensure the industry stays up to date with current demands.

In recent years, consumer interest in sustainable products has grown with a 2021 report by WWF finding that internet searches for sustainable goods had increased by 71% from 2016 worldwide. More recently, a 2023 consumer survey by PWC found that eight out of 10 participants would pay more for sustainably sourced products. In conjunction with this, government legislation is working to facilitate more sustainable packaging. For example, in the UK, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) has been revised to propose mandatory reuse targets for all materials, while certain single-use plastic items, such as plastic cutlery and plates, have been banned.

It is therefore clear that the packaging market is undergoing a transformation in the name of sustainability, but there are many factors that need to be considered to achieve packaging that is truly sustainable.

What to Consider When Innovating for Sustainable Packaging

The sustainable packaging market is set to change in a range of ways, with a move toward renewably sourced and reusable packaging and a departure from traditional fossil-fuel based plastic and compostable materials. During this transition, companies worldwide have taken the approach to swap plastic for paper, largely due to a negative public view of plastic. It’s true that consumers tend to favor paper over plastic, with 62% of consumers viewing paper as more environmentally friendly and 70% actively avoiding plastic packaging altogether.

Although the transition to paper has its benefits as the material is more easily recyclable and biodegradable than plastic, there are still some shortcomings that must be addressed. For example, the Northern Ireland Assembly found that a paper bag takes four times as much energy to produce than a plastic one. Additionally, as paper is heavier than plastic, more vehicles are needed to transport the packaging. This means more greenhouse gas emissions and more air pollution. Therefore, when looking at the process of manufacturing and transportation, plastic is the greener option, however when considering the recycling and disposal of the product, paper is more environmentally friendly. This demonstrates why businesses must look at the whole picture when deciding between paper and plastic.

Indeed, the Rethink Plastic Alliance recently called for legislative change to eliminate single-use materials rather than swapping one for the other. This was off the back of the recent increase in paper packaging that has resulted in 34 million tonnes of paper packaging waste in the EU alone.

This highlights the need for reusable packaging instead, regardless of the material type. Rising in popularity with leading businesses getting involved such as Costa Coffee, reusable packaging has a range of benefits, such as limiting carbon emissions by up to 60%, reducing solid waste by up to 86% and using up to 80% less water than single-use packaging.

In addition to reusability, it must be considered where the packaging will end up at the end of its life, as emphasized by a 2023 study by Zero Waste Europe, which highlights the importance of a sufficient recycling infrastructure to properly collect, treat, and feed waste material back into the supply chain. For example, while compostable plastic is banned by many UK retailers, such as Tesco, as it cannot be easily recycled, this material type is used very successfully in Italy since the introduction of BIOREPACK in 2021, Europe’s first Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. BIOREPACK holds producers accountable throughout their products’ lifecycle, facilitating and funding the recycling and recovery of compostable packaging. BIOREPACK has since achieved a compostable packaging recycling rate of 52%, reaching 61% of the country.

While it is clear packaging must be contained in a closed-loop system for the good of the planet, a 2016 report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) found that this is not the case for the current industry. Indeed, each year the plastic packaging sector alone produces 78 million tonnes of product where only 14% of this is collected for recycling while just 2% is fed back into the supply chain. The rest is left for waste – incinerated, sent to landfill or left to leak into the environment.

It is therefore essential that, regardless of the material used, packaging must be kept part of a closed-loop system to be reused again and again.

A Call to Action for the Packaging Industry

While consumers continue to call for more sustainable packaging options, and government action aligns with these demands, it is important for businesses to supply innovative sustainable solutions to keep up with the world’s changing concerns. Nevertheless, this is no simple feat, with the current global packaging supply chain massively linear, resulting in masses of waste worldwide. It is therefore important for businesses to face the challenges of the circular economy head-on, with a changing focus to reusability and if the material is properly supported by a national recycling infrastructure.

Overall, while the packaging industry continues to transform in recent years, going forward, it’s critical for the circular economy to be properly prioritized if the devastating effects of the climate crisis are to be countered and the historical environmental damage of the packaging industry is to be rectified.

About the Author

Mike Jones is head of innovation at Mainetti. Learn more at www.mainetti.com.