Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Taking the environment into account when choosing packaging is just like switching the light off when you go out; many small changes can achieve a vast improvement. And also just like switching the light off, better packaging can lead to financial gain as well. Ecological improvements do not necessarily mean higher costs.

Then and now

The history of environmentally sound packaging started in the nineteen eighties with the assessment of packaging on its “eco-balance”, which is – briefly – a number that indicates the impact on the environment. This approach was not used for long. Weight reduction was encouraged in its place, followed by the levy of a weight-based tax. The rate of tax varied, depending on the raw material used, but the scale of rates did not seem to have been structured logically on the basis of eco-balance. Tax benefits meant that manufacturers tended to choose less efficient materials that actually made the packaging heavier. After Al Gore’s film “The Inconvenient Truth”, packaging started to be assessed on its environmental soundness once more, in the style of the eco-balance. Packaging and contents were now given a joint rating known as the carbon footprint, which enables consumers to decide for themselves how clean they want to be. Ecological improvements are now compelled by the consumers’ choice, instead of by legislation or taxation.

Impact on the environment

If we want to have a positive impact on the environment through our choice of packaging, encouraging people to recycle, re-use, or reclaim energy is the first practical step we can take. The only condition is that the methods of achieving these goals are not more harmful themselves than the process used to make the original packaging. The many types of packaging and the diversity of the raw materials from which they are manufactured can be extremely confusing, however, so let’s use our common sense.

Little effort

The fastest way to make packaging more environmentally sound is to reduce its weight. Be careful, however, that this is not done at the expense of the minimum specifications for the application. An example: if you annually use 100,000 24-gram bags as packaging for 2 kilos of potatoes and you switch to bags made of a different material, which are also suitable for holding 2 kilos but only weigh 6 grams, you need to produce or transport 1800 less kilos of raw material every year.

Energy reclamation

Those bags probably end up in the kitchen waste, which will ultimately be burned with the objective of reclaiming energy for domestic use. This new bag may yield more energy when it is burned than was needed to make it, in which case the bag replaces the fuel that would otherwise have to be used for combustion.

Recycling

Now imagine that this new bag is made of material that had previously been used for the manufacture of other packaging and was subsequently recycled. The material for that same bag is used several times in this case, while it probably costs less. As a consequence, the sales representative can tell lots of positive stories about ecological improvements in comparison with the packing material that he formerly used.

Raw materials

What raw materials are used to produce packaging? The main ones used are trees, oils, minerals or metals, all of which confer different properties on the packaging in which they are processed. Aluminium is heat-resistant, which is why a tealight is “packed” in aluminium instead of in paper or plastic. The properties demanded of packaging can often only be found in one special raw material. The best that we can do for the environment is to ensure that we use as little as possible of that raw material or re-use previously processed (recycled) material again. A lot of energy is needed in the production of metals like aluminium, but making a tin from recycled material saves 95% of the energy needed to make that same tin from the original raw material.

Both glass and aluminium are outstandingly suitable for recycling and most of the products made from these raw materials contain substantial quantities of recycled material. In this way, a great deal of energy can be spared in the manufacture of packaging.

Paper is made from trees, but trees function as the lungs of the earth, because they absorb the CO2 that we emit and release the O2 (oxygen) that we inhale. As a consequence, wood pulp manufacturers must treat our forests responsibly. Manufacturing paper from recycled materials leads to 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution. Furthermore, fewer trees have to be cut down for this purpose.

Plastics can be made from the by-products of refining petroleum for the production of petrol. New reserves of petroleum are constantly being sought. The energy this generates has much and growing competition in the form of solar energy, wind energy, nuclear energy, etc. Plastics have greater commercial value for the refineries, however, than the oil that they sell. There are innumerable types of plastics for all kinds of applications. These materials too can be recycled, potentially saving as much as two-thirds of the energy needed to produce the original materials. They often have the highest yield if they are burned for the reclamation of energy.

Litter

A small quantity of packaging and disposables unfortunately ends up as litter, which must be prevented at any price. It should be demonstrated that products that may end this way are biologically degradable in the environment, since there seems to be no other solution. Types of paper and some plastics can be made biologically degradable. It is important to emphasise that biological degradation in the environment is not always possible for products that are compostable. The fact is that industrial composting is a process that requires high temperatures and certain circumstances not found everywhere in the environment.