Today just about every company is talking about “going green” and beefing up sustainable practices to lessen their impact on the environment.
Both consumer packaged goods companies and shoppers are placing more emphasis on green initiatives. According to Nielsen, 75% of Millennials say they are willing to change their habits to reduce their impact on the environment, and 90% are willing to pay more for products that contain environmentally friendly or sustainable ingredients.
As a brand owner, it’s important to think about lessening your environmental impact, from choosing sustainable materials to lowering your carbon footprint, to finding ways to reduce waste. Wherever you are on your journey, consider the following ways to go green in today’s environment.
Mind Your Materials
The materials used in packaging make a difference on your environmental impact. Consider using eco-friendly packaging for food and other products instead of traditional petroleum-based plastic.
- Recyclable packaging, including PE-PE film, is suitable for store drop-off recycling programs. Using recyclable packaging means less materials end up in a landfill.
- PCR, or post-consumer recycled materials, are made from the items consumers recycle every day. Making new products from PCR materials removes plastic from the environment by converting discarded materials back into resin that can be used again.
Using recycled content for flexible packaging has significant environmental advantages, such as reducing energy consumption and the extraction of finite resources, because reprocessing existing plastics uses less energy and fossil fuels.
- Compostable pouches are made of compostable-certified films, inks, lamination, adhesive, and zippers, and are free of fossil and petroleum plastics.
Using compostable packaging for your product line-up cuts down on the amount of trash in landfills and reduces the costs and carbon emissions of hauling and processing those materials.
Using eco-friendly materials like those listed here may help your company reduce its carbon footprint, minimize its impact on landfills, and meet sustainability goals.
Choose Digital Printing
Sustainability starts with the packaging process. Did you know that compared to traditional, or flexographic printing, digital printing is a far more sustainable option? It uses less energy, produces less waste, and has a smaller carbon footprint.
Plus if you choose a digital printer that uses the HP Indigo 20000 digital printing presses, your packaging will be manufactured using carbon neutral machines and polymer-based inks, which are free of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs). These sustainable inks consume less energy and emit fewer greenhouse gases than solvent-based or UV-curable inks typically used in traditional packaging manufacturing.
Print On Demand
With digital printing technology, brands can print on demand, ordering what they need when they need it, thus avoiding inventory and obsolescence cost and waste.
Subsequently, you avoid wasting unused packaging from a changed recipe, branding or design changes, regulation changes, or even unused product from a decrease in sales. Ordering on demand means you never have to keep large inventories, unless you want to. Reducing excess inventory not only cuts costs, but also prevents unused packaging going into the landfill.
With the ability to print to demand, print multiple SKUs in one run, and place low minimum orders, brands can dramatically reduce obsolescence (both waste and costs) when compared to conventional printing methods.
Partner with a Local Company
When attempting to lessen your carbon footprint, consider that going with a local printer will reduce the carbon emissions of importing product from overseas or even from cross-country transportation. This not only means less emissions but faster turnaround time too.
Connect with Your Customers
There are several ways to connect with your customers, and some can even help you find out if your product is being disposed of correctly.
Through track and trace methods, you can follow a package’s journey from the beginning to the end. Consumers may use track and trace by scanning the code and learning about sourcing ingredients, the product’s journey from farm to table (or store), and how to properly dispose of the package.
Brand owners can use track and trace to obtain critical information about the supply chain that will help to strengthen logistics and follow that package’s journey to the point of purchase and beyond, all the way through to disposal or recycling.
Eco Friendly Packaging Company
ePac is dedicated to providing sustainable packaging solutions through the use of carbon neutral digital printers and offering multiple environmentally friendly packaging options.
ePac’s connected packaging solution, ePacConnect, allows brand owners to personalize how they engage with their consumers, verify authenticity, and trace their product’s journey, all through their own digitally enabled, flexible packaging. It also allows brand owners to collect information all the way down to the individual product level to enhance business intelligence like never before. Our technology is based on variable data composition only possible through the digital printing process offered by ePac.
Want to get started with eco-friendly custom packaging? Call us today and take advantage of all the sustainable benefits of digital printing.
