Packaging Sustainability

Key elements in today’s practical packaging design include packaging sustainability, product security, functionality and convenience. There is a lot at stake while also trying to incorporate a design appeal across multiple consumers, and obtaining practical implementation throughout the entire packaging and marketing process.

The future of flexible packaging also has to adapt to maintain sustainability, while reducing environmental impact. A large component at play in flexible packaging is light-weighting. Take a typical glass jar. By replacing a glass jar holding product you are lowering costs and providing sustainability. Glass jars are costly for raw materials, risk breakage and are heavy causing costly shipping and storage.

Energy Consumption

A study by Unilever presented at the Packaging Summit in 2008 shows 30% of overall energy use consumption of a glass jar is directly from packaging, where a flexible package is 6%. Features can also be incorporated in the flexible package such as a press to close zipper, sufficient barriers, and stiff structure for stand-up capability, high definition graphics and clear formats to display quality of product.

Looking at packaging weight, using a glass jar with a product weight of 800 grams, has a package weight of 250 grams (3:1 package ratio), whereas the flexible package comes in at a 44:1 package ratio with only 23 grams of packaging weight to 1000 grams of product capability.

By utilizing flexible packaging, you are reducing the associated fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The amount of unfilled glass jars transported on 26 truckloads would only require one truckload of unfilled plastics pouches. The end product also has reduced secondary packaging, which in the end will decrease the final cost to consumers.

Tempo Plastics is constantly reviewing alternative material technologies to provide our customers environmental solutions that fit their flexible packaging needs.