Are some supplies essentially unsustainable? Previously, most firms working with difficult or hard-to-recycle supplies would’ve mentioned no, believing their materials would overcome recognized obstacles ultimately.
At present, the tides are turning. Notable supplies similar to plastic are assembly a “no extra probabilities” angle from design professionals. As a part of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s second-annual Traits Report, which launches subsequent month, we’re seeing a transparent development wherein the design and sustainable packaging industries are abandoning their previous neutrality on supplies.
How sure supplies fell out of favor
When firms started to work on sustainability tasks in earnest a number of a long time in the past, most took a “materials agnostic” strategy. They targeted on the “job” that packaging wanted to do and tried to pick out a cloth that balanced sustainability with effectivity and value. This led to a system that prioritized useful, aesthetic and efficiency necessities over materials sustainability.
In 2025, this can be a decidedly much less fashionable technique. Whereas fossil-fuel plastic might sound the one materials going through this pushback, take a more in-depth look and also you’ll see this development enjoying out for sure fibers and bioplastics, too.
Let’s begin with plastic. Public notion paired with U.S. and worldwide packaging insurance policies, international plastic treaty discussions and improvements in various supplies have completely modified the plastics dialog. Though the worldwide plastics treaty stalled and is awaiting future negotiations as of August, final yr a coalition of countries took notable positions on plastics. This included members of the EU, South Korea, Canada, Rwanda, Peru, and — fleetingly however meaningfully — the U.S, the place the federal authorities is advancing markedly pro-plastic insurance policies. These nations pushed for worldwide caps on plastic manufacturing and the elimination of sure dangerous chemical substances utilized in plastic manufacturing — all decidedly “non-agnostic” positions.
What about paper? Though we’re seeing a increase in paper-based packaging innovation (in 2024, one development we noticed was the “paperization of all the things”), the “tree-free” motion can also be noteworthy. A lot of smaller manufacturers, typically makers of merchandise similar to rest room paper, paper towels and disposable meals serviceware, have began to lean on various fibers similar to bamboo to inform a narrative about how their merchandise assist save timber and stop deforestation. This messaging performs into sure assumptions — typically misconceptions — concerning the sustainability of other fibers, but it additionally alerts a vocal transfer away from one materials in the direction of others.
Corporations set material-specific targets
Fed up with threats of microplastics, deforestation or the continued challenges with recycling, firms are setting material-specific targets and touting their work to shifting away from sure supplies. Some current examples embody:
- Google’s purpose to get rid of plastic packaging for brand new shopper electronics merchandise by 2025. Final yr, the tech behemoth made information by open-sourcing its plastic-free information and sharing its learnings and merchandise with peer firms. The corporate is already 99 p.c of the way in which to its purpose, and the redesigns have catalyzed different sustainability wins — packaging weight and quantity have been lowered by at the least 50 p.c.
- As of October, Amazon eliminated all plastic air pillows from its packaging in international achievement facilities, changing them with paper filler created from one hundred pc recycled content material. This amounted to the corporate’s largest plastic packaging discount effort in North America and can keep away from practically 15 billion plastic air pillows yearly.
- Japanese multinational pharmaceutical firm Takeda set and exceeded a 50 p.c sustainable paper packaging purpose, asking their suppliers to pursue Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification whereas additionally exploring how one can scale back paper inserts by transitioning to digital product data leaflets.
- Unilever has shared its efforts to “transition from hard-to-recycle plastics into paper with a compostable barrier” and change plastics “with an alternate materials sooner or later.”
Approaching supplies with a brand new mindset
Corporations — and other people — are approaching supplies in a brand new approach, setting boundaries round what sort of supplies they need to work or work together with. Each materials comes with sustainability and efficiency trade-offs. Some firms — typically impressed by shopper strain — are actually saying, “I choose a cloth with these trade-offs, not these.”
This shift is much like other forms of environmentally aware mindset shifts, similar to individuals opting to eat much less meat in favor of plant-based alternate options. When individuals select faux meat, for instance, they’re opting into present trade-offs similar to artificial components or larger prices, and opting out of upper carbon footprints or moral points with animal merchandise.
In packaging, this shift is prompting extra firms to attract a line within the sand for his or her portfolio. As an alternative of trying to resolve long-standing challenges and neverending trade-offs for a variety of supplies, firms can lean right into a smaller set of points for a handful of supplies they like.
So perhaps the way forward for sustainable packaging boils all the way down to narrowing your deal with materials decisions that provide help to decide which sustainability battles are price combating for.
[Join over 1,500 professionals transforming how we make, sell and circulate products at Circularity, April 29-May 1, Denver.]