Ideas about sustainable packaging design

Ideas about sustainable packaging design

There's no truly sustainable packaging in the world, on the contrary, sustainability is just a process, its goal is to make the packaging sustainability continue to improve over time, thereby reducing the overall environmental influence. From a sustainability point of view, packaging materials, including glass, plastic, paper and aluminum, it is difficult to distinguish good or bad between them. According to product use and different packaging purposes, each material has its own advantages and disadvantages. In view of the concept of sustainable packaging design has been firmly established, there are some ideas to improve the environmental impact of packaging.

1. Packaging design from the perspective of the life cycle

There are a lot of life-cycle assessment tools can help packaging designers to understand the influence of different packaging on the environment.It is important to note that sustainability indicators and standards are constantly growing and changing, so as long as a solution is selected, it is necessary to insist on using it with different tools on the packaging of the same kind of measurement, you may get different results, the key is to maintain consistency and to find the right direction.

2.Minimize the use of packaging materials

Can we minimize the use of packaging materials under the premise that does not affect product integrity? That's a goal that the designers always bear in mind cause suppliers are constantly developing new containers, lids, labels and other products to reduce packaging volume, and narrow the purpose of the price tag area.

3.Select new alternative packaging for the product distribution

New machinery and new materials could use less material to produce injection molded cases, trays or shelves packaging, to minimize packaging waste.

4. Looking for reusing packaging opportunities

In certain degree, reuse packaging is the only way that harmless to the environment, when design the packaging for products the designer should make the packaging more practical to reuse them.

5. Maximize the recyclable packaging design

Packaging materials in the production process, the most effective way to save energy is recycling. Although many materials such as paper and PET has achieved a large-scale recycling, coatings, labels, and other enhancements to the elements of the packaging function is difficult to find appropriate ways of recycling, so the designer should try new technology to maximize the recyclable packaging design.

6. Encourage packaging comsumption strategy

Although the big packaging looks better than the separate packaging from the point of sustainable development, but compared to the actual consumption rate, the small packaging has greater environmental advantages. The packaging to promote the consumption is often easier to achieve breakthroughs in its sustainability.

7.Use raw materials made ​​from renewable materials

Packaging based on renewable raw materials - bioplastics made ​​from corn or sugar cane to the protective packaging is made ​​with mushrooms has become the fastest growing one area. Compared with traditional materials, these new technologies faced with certain problems in actual production, but it is a new way for sustainable packaging industry.