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Eco friendly food packaging
Eco friendly. There are two parts to the phrase we’re looking a little deeper into today. If we’re going to help our planet retain resources without causing the ongoing harm we have, we need to consider it closely and how it impacts our actions.
Adjective: ecological
- Relating to or concerned with the relation of living organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.
"Pollution is posing a serious threat to the ecological balance of the oceans."
Adjective: friendly
- Kind and pleasant.
"They were friendly to" - Denoting something that is adapted for or is not harmful to a specified thing.
"An environment-friendly agronomic practice."
Eco friendly, then, picking out the important parts of the definitions shown, translates into adopting practices that prevent harm to living organisms and their surroundings.
Or, most simply put: Being kind to nature.
Do we want to be part of the problem or part of the solution?
There are enough documentaries, articles, YouTube videos, and social media posts fed into our daily lives that nobody should be unaware of the damage we, as a society of nations, have inflicted on the world we live in.
- Pollution in our seas, forming floating islands of plastic and waste material, some allegedly the size of large countries.
- Overflowing landfills, with billions of tons of waste each year, creating an excess of what we can destroy or discard soundly.
- How our practices and lack of care led to climate change, impacting vast areas and the animal and plant life inhabiting the most failed areas.
- 3 billion tonnes of food waste (UN) and all the associated footprint involved.
Could we be the eco friendly judges, juries, and executioners?
Education into what makes the most eco friendly packaging plays a big part in our consideration of plastics and packaging use. Admittedly, while you’re trudging around the supermarket, kids in tow and a hundred more things on your mind, choosing a product on the strength of how environmentally friendly its packaging is, isn’t always at the top of our lists.
To earn the trust of their customers and to buy brand confidence, it’s up to each business to make sure you can see the efforts they’re making to persuade you to choose them over their alternatives.
Branding is big news for eco friendly businesses
It’s up to you which brand you choose, but it’s up to the brands themselves to educate you why you should choose them. If you can see straight away that packaging can be recycled—whether that’s because it’s made of paper, card, plastic or glass, or it’s got a big ‘RECYCLE’ logo stamped on it—there’s enough psychology there to subconsciously drive the most aware into picking those options.
How products are packaged play straight into our eco friendly mindsets, especially the most mindful of us; Millenials are proving the most likely to be persuaded using eco and environmental sales tactics down to their uber-woke sensibilities.
Plain, single-colour or minimally printed paper and card are the go-to eco-looks for natural products and eco friendly brands. We’ve adjusted to putting the two things together, seeing those steadily reinforced marketing practices associated with eco-solutions.
Do the products you put in your baskets and trolleys scream ‘natural’, or do they look like over-packaged, carelessly thought-through items, screaming of a needless journey into the landfill? And just because it looks ‘natural’, does it mean it is better for the planet than alternatives.
Eco friendly packaging ideas heading into the future
It’s all well and good telling the world to stop using plastic and replace those items with more widely accepted recycled materials such as glass, cans, paper and card—but is that actually eco friendly?
If creating packaging from what we believe are eco friendly materials uses more fuel, water, and other resources to produce them, the definition of eco friendly starts to slip out of the window. Should we be judging each element on how well they recycle or by their carbon footprint? Either could prove more damaging to our environment than the other.
Eco friendly doesn’t always mean sustainable, and sustainable isn’t always ethical.
All of a sudden, the problem becomes more complicated. There are all kinds of numbers to juggle and ethics to consider. The following are just a few ideas into how some of the forward-thinking companies found solutions where nobody else was looking!
Mushrooms and seaweed? Are you having me on?
These completely natural alternatives don’t sound anything like traditional packing materials, yet hopefully, they will grow into a broader environmental and ecologically driven marketplace.
There are now packaging materials created from mushroom roots using the chemical mycelium. It's fused with cleaned and ground agricultural waste to produce an incredibly efficient biodegradable material. Made purely from waste, it’s a win-win, and as a non-toxic, organic matter, we can compost it at home, in our gardens.
Many seaweeds and algae contain agar, a gelatinous substance already used in the food industry as a thickener and veggie alternative to gelatine—and now, it’s getting used as packaging. It’s slowly expanding in popularity as an eco friendly food packaging in UK products, and hopefully, over time, it’ll become another valuable step towards the sustainable solutions we need.
Also, it shouldn’t be too much longer before single-use products like straws and disposable cutlery are made from this natural organic solution. Suddenly, single-use products aren’t as problematic as they have been, with those items no longer clogging landfill sites or polluting our seas.
Modern eco friendly packaging materials
So, what are eco friendly packaging materials?
National Flexible new and innovative pack solutions
We’d love you to check out the innovation we’re bringing to the plastics packaging industry. We’re continuously developing new materials, new ways of using them and instigating methods of reducing the amount of material you use—in turn, reducing your costs and the impact on the planet.
As much as plastics are portrayed as the bad guy in product packaging, the latest materials and technologies prove that they’ll soon be one of the better options for the environment. When used effectively—recycled or recyclable—they can complete a cycle that removes all the problem areas we associate with plastic packaging.
Plant-based packaging
There are plenty of apparent plant-based packaging materials, such as paper and card or fabric, yet, considering the elements we looked at earlier—using seaweed and mushrooms—there are many more options we can consider as we move forward.
By replacing the petrochemicals used to make modern plastic with more sustainable resources as alternatives, the European Bioplastics Association (EBA) believes that using sugar cane, wood, and corn, for example, could help to boost eco friendly bioplastic usage by 50% in the next 5 years.
Sugarcane fibre, a by-product of sugar manufacturing, is already used to manufacture compostable bowls and food packs. Although some will view land being made to ‘grow packaging’ rather than food unethical, it’s an option worthy of consideration as we move forward.
This also shows how education plays a substantial part in how we recycle. In such a spoon-fed and mollycoddled society, implementing systems that ensure each product and material is easy for us to manage is a must.
Plant-based bottles and bricks from Coca-Cola and Lego
Coca-Cola continues to expand on its PlantBottle packaging system introduced in 2012, slowly reducing the use of monoethylene glycol, and by 2015 it unveiled the first PlantBottles made entirely out of plant-based materials.
Lego is also researching plant-based plastic for their building blocks—quite literally building a better future!
Polylactic acid (PLA) is made from fermented plant starch and could potentially be the material to replace single-use plastic bags. Not only that, but given its ability to be shaped into more durable forms of packaging, they’re an eco-friendly option for mailer bags when a box isn’t necessary for the product’s protection. Ensuring the material finds its way to an industrial composting facility is the main issue currently. This isn’t the fault of the material.
Choosing organic fabrics instead of plastic bags
We’ve been encouraged to replace our single-use carrier bags with the popular alternative bag-for-life—yet it’s still a plastic bag requiring multiple uses before it’s better for the planet than its single-use counterpart.
You would have to use a cotton bag over 130 times before it was environmentally preferable, 11 times for bags made from recycled plastic, or at least 4 or 5 shopping trips for your bag-for-life bags.
A single-use carrier has a minimal carbon footprint, so if you’re going to switch to multiple-use options, make sure you’re doing it properly.
Since the introduction of single-use carrier bag prices, the reduction of plastic use from these products has been significant, but sadly, it’s increased by far more in its alternatives, due to people still forgetting to bring their reusable bags with them. The solution has failed overall and needs further action to find a true solution.
Reduce, reuse, recycle
We’re encouraged to reuse as many of the things we throw away as possible—and rightly so. Less waste means more good news for Mother Earth.
Reducing the amount of packaging and packing, especially in an ever-growing world of mail order and online buying culture, is another area capable of delivering a massive difference in protecting essential resources.
And of course, we’ll keep looking into the best ways our plastics can be part of the solution, with everything from our eco friendly protein powder packaging to biodegradable sandwich, bakery, meat, and cheese packs.
When it comes to lowering plastic waste by providing our customers with some of the best eco friendly packaging in the UK, we’re not only here to help look good by playing your part—but cutting your costs and saving you money.