Sustainability is getting much attention right now, and with good reason. The impacts of business activities on the environment have become increasingly obvious, and negative effects from your business activities on the environment could harm your business reputation. This has prompted companies to consider their attitude toward the environment and strive towards sustainability to reduce their environmental footprint and position themselves as eco-friendly.
One of the first things a business can do to run a more sustainable operation is to use eco-friendly packaging materials. For instance, adopting eco-friendly mailer boxes to transport goods to customers instead of regular boxes can reduce your business’s contribution to landfills in several ways. You could create eco-friendly mailer boxes to be biodegradable or compostable, so they break down naturally without posing a risk to the environment. They could also be created to be recyclable or reusable so they can be used multiple times before disposal.
That is just one of the numerous instances demonstrating how sustainable packaging can help you become a more environmentally-friendly business. This article looks at the different types of eco-friendly packaging and things to consider when choosing eco-friendly packaging for your product.
Things to Consider When Choosing Eco-friendly Packaging
Eco-friendly packaging describes packaging materials and practices designed to have minimal environmental impacts. They are usually made from renewable resources or recycled materials. They can be reused, recycled, or composted at the end of their life cycle.
Common examples are biodegradable plastic, recycled paper, plant-based packaging, and compostable packaging. Here are some things to consider when choosing sustainable packaging for your product.
Choose the Right Packaging for your Products
As a first step, you should use sustainable packaging specifically designed for your product. With sustainability in mind, you might be tempted to prioritize sustainability over other factors such as durability, functionality, cost, and marketing. However, they are equally important, and the ideal situation would be to balance these factors. Selecting sustainable packaging but ignoring whether it is the right packaging for the product is completely the wrong approach. It would be best to have packaging that can effectively hold your product while having a minimal environmental impact.
For instance, if your product is made from fragile materials that can be damaged during transit to the customers, you will want to ensure that the packaging adequately protects the goods during delivery. Failing to use sturdy yet sustainable packaging can affect the quality of the product.
Do Your Research
According to a survey by Raconteur, one of the common problems that branding professionals face is a lack of common understanding about sustainable packaging. Before you commit to any packaging, it is crucial to research to determine if it is truly sustainable. You need to know how your packaging will be better than other packaging alternatives.
There have been issues with packaging products advertised as sustainable but causing similarly negative environmental effects. An example is biodegradable packaging. Biodegradable packaging, for instance, breaks down into non-toxic materials. However, some types of biodegradable packaging only break down under certain conditions. If they aren’t put in these situations, they won’t break down at all and become waste.
The bottomline is to research how sustainable packaging materials help the environment before you adopt them in your business.
Branding and Marketing
Another thing to consider is how sustainable packaging affects your brand. Customers are becoming increasingly conscious of the environmental impacts of their products. They are willing to patronize brands that prioritize sustainability. According to Sustainable Packaging Unwrapped, 57 percent of online customers are willing to pay a premium for eco-friendly products. This implies that you stand to improve your customer base with sustainable packaging.
Using sustainable packaging demonstrates your commitment to minimizing the impacts of your business activities and can help you win our eco-conscious customers. However, it would help to communicate your sustainable efforts to your customers via branding and marketing so they know what the company is doing for the environment. This will help your company to build brand loyalty.
For instance, a company that uses recycled paper can highlight this in its marketing campaigns and product designs to inform clients about its sustainability efforts and educate them on the benefits of sustainable packaging.