As a business, one of your goals should be to minimize your impact on the planet. This is an important part of making the world a better place and can actually translate into more sales if you let your customers know that are making eco-friendly business choices. After all, consumers like simple steps that help them feel good about reducing their impact, and nothing is simpler than switching the household goods you buy to a greener brand. You just have to figure out whether you can be more green with your packaging.
There Is Always a Way
When it comes to being more green with your product packaging, there is almost always a way to do so. Whether it is switching your materials, reducing waste, or doing something else, you should be able to find a way to at least improve your environmental friendliness a little bit. If none of the following solutions seems to work at a glance, conduct a sustainability audit. Maybe you can make another area of your company more green to help the planet.
Opt for Recyclable Materials
The easiest method to make your packaging greener is to change the materials you use for it. By going with recycled and/or recyclable materials, you can take a big step toward environmental friendliness by minimizing the amount of resources used to create your packaging. Corrugated cardboard is popular, for example, because of its low cost, ability to be customized, and environmentally friendly nature. You can also find recycled plastics, like recycled PET, that are made using recycled plastic water bottles. Even the cushioning materials you choose can be good or bad for the planet. The most sustainable option tends to be loose fill peanuts, while Styrofoam is notoriously bad.
Make Your Packaging Reusable
Another option if you can’t make your packaging recyclable (or even if you can), is to design it to be reusable. The classic example would be a cookie tin that gets used for decades to hold sewing supplies or other household items. Use that classic tin as your inspiration and create packaging that your customers will want to keep using over and over again. You can do this by making the dispensing mechanism convenient or by simply creating a beautiful package. See if you can design the packaging so it is reusable as a gift bag, an organizer for drawers, a glass jar you can store items in, or a sturdy round container to hold makeup brushes. With some creativity, the possibilities are limitless. Best of all, in addition to reducing waste, making your packaging reusable helps your brand recognition, as your logo will be viewed for a long time.
Reduce Your Materials
In addition to changing the materials you use to go greener, you can also adjust how much you use. Packaging that fits your product perfectly will use less material than boxes that are large and bulky. This reduction in material is good for the planet and for your pocketbook, as it cuts your costs both for the materials and for shipping the product
