As little plastic as possible – with as much product protection as necessary.
For years, the industry has been working on technical solutions to save packaging material. This is the nature of business: cost savings for the same function. This has saved huge amounts of plastic compared to previous years. The popular example of minced meat tray packaging proves this nicely. Whereas heavy shells with thick walls were used in the past, today the wall thicknesses have already been optimized – as thin as possible. The fact that this also makes an ecological contribution to conserving resources is a wonderful and important side effect. We hear from the industry that the reduction of wall thicknesses has been technically exhausted. So we can’t save any more.
With alternative approaches, such as the “Flow Pack”, further leaps in material reduction can be made. So far, unfortunately, these packages have been poorly received by consumers. In the innovative example of Schur Flexibles, the special mono-material solution for improved recyclability is the crucial piece of the puzzle for contemporary packaging.
As already critically noted in our trend“Recyclability through mono-plastic“, the question must be allowed as to how sustainable this packaging really is without a functioning circular economy. In any case, material reduction is an important step: it makes economic and ecological sense to save every superfluous gram of plastic packaging.
Best Practice: Diverse
Image source: Schur Flexibles
