5 basic rules for eco-friendly packaging!
4min read
27/09/2019
Do you have an e-commerce business and need to ship your products in safe and protective, but at the same time environmentally friendly packaging? Eco-sustainability, eco-friendly, reducing environmental impact: these are just some of the words we hear and read most often in newspapers and on social channels. But what does this mean in practice?
The growth of certain sectors, first and foremost e-commerce, has contributed to the exponential increase in the need for boxes, tapes, filling systems capable of protecting and transporting each product during delivery.
Packaging and environmental protection go hand in hand, ecological change has begun, Raja’s active and conscious commitment is to find and propose more and more eco-sustainable alternatives and to ‘educate’ its customers on good environmental habits.
Today as yesterday, we cannot do without packaging!
Packaging is essential to protect, transport and deliver all products in good condition. Without them, products would not arrive intact at their destination and would be immediately discarded even before being used or consumed.
Did you know that:
- 73% of consumers do not buy from the same site again if their order arrived damaged the first time? (1)
- 66% of consumers think that packaging reflects the importance the seller attaches to customers and their orders? (2)
Today’s challenge is to package in an eco-friendly way
Consumers are increasingly aware of and sensitive to environmental issues and certainly do not like over-packaging! Packaging must therefore meet new expectations: reduce raw material consumption, use renewable or recycled materials and be recyclable.
49% of Italians prefer a product in eco-friendly packaging (3)
5 basic rules for eco-friendly packaging
The time of the linear economy consisting of – raw materials, production, distribution, consumption, waste – is over! Today we are taking the path of the circular model that aims to reduce our environmental impact.
Raja, not only analyses market needs, researches and proposes eco-sustainable solutions, but as an expert packaging consultant, has identified the five good habits in environmentally friendly packaging.
Reduce, Reuse, Redesign, Renew, Recycle. Those are the 5 Rs of packaging!
1- Reduce packaging consumption
This is possible if you limit the weight and volume of packaging to the minimum necessary to best protect your products without over-packaging them.
How to put this rule into practice? Here is an example: variable height boxes. Thanks to the pre-cuts, it adapts to the contents, and can be up to 11 different heights! This type of box is particularly useful if you ship products of different sizes. The result? More compact boxes, less filling material and less tape used.
2- Re-use
We at RAJA offer, whenever possible, packaging designed from the outset to be reused.
Some are designed to meet different customer requirements and others to be reused several times without alteration.
The packaging made easy has been designed with precisely this logic in mind! Paper envelopes for shipping and returns, polypropylene wolf-mouth containers or 100% recyclable plastic pallets are other examples of packaging that can be reused.
3- Re-think
We work closely with our suppliers to offer you a range of eco-responsible packaging with the same quality of protection and meeting all your needs.
For example, instead of using polystyrene corners, try 100% recycled cardboard corners, which are environmentally friendly, practical, durable and protect against impacts.
Do you use plastic bags? Try recycled ones!
RAJABAG eco-friendly transparent 50 micron bags are made from 100% recycled materials!
4- Renew
The use of packaging made from renewable raw materials helps reduce our environmental impact.
Pulp, the raw material and main material of our cardboard and paper packaging, is produced from 70% wood from thinning operations, necessary for forest maintenance, the remaining 30% comes from fallen trees and wood recovered from sawmills (source: Ecofolio).
Whenever possible, we use recycled raw materials as in the case of the 1,000 products in our offer!
The Jiffy paper padded envelopesuper-protective and environmentally friendly recyclable paper is made entirely of paper, 75% of which is recycled.
5- Recycle
To adopt a circular economy model, it is essential to recycle materials in the right way to give packaging a second life.
How to do this?
- Choose recyclable packaging
- Promote separate waste collection
- Reuse packaging whenever possible
Cardboard is an environmentally sustainable material!
100% renewable, 100% recyclable and 92% recycled and 100% biodegradable.
But we still have progress to make when it comes to recycling plastic.
Today some plastics are recyclable by everyone, others only after selective collection in companies.
Read more about recycling at rajapack.co.uk/ecological-packaging-sustainable/waste-collection
Packaging and the environment are two key challenges for the RAJA Group. We are concerned with the distribution as well as the role packaging plays in protecting and transporting its products and we are actively working to reduce our impact on the environment.
Visit the Raja website and discover our green products!
Sources:
(1) Package Insight 2016 study, conducted by Pregis on US consumers. (2) Sealead Air 2014 Study – Packaging for e-commerce, conducted on US consumers. (3) Pro Carton 2018 survey, European Consumer Packaging Perceptions, conducted on 7,000 consumers from 7 different countries.
