Excessive Product Packaging
- Packaging is used to protect the product and represent the brand.
- Excessive packaging uses more material and resources to manufacture. This also increases the price.
- Product packaging is really difficult to recycle properly, meaning most of it will likely end up in landfills.
- First step to a sustainable economy is reducing the amount of packaging because it reduces carbon emissions through manufacturing and transportation.
- Japan is one of the greenest consumer societies, consumers and producers pay attention to the amount of packaging used and thrown away.
- German law requires manufacturers to collect and recycle product packaging after it is sold.
- Materials that are deemed environmentally friendly can still be harmful in other ways. For example. biopolymers take a lot of energy and produce greenhouse gases when being manufactured.
Most products have an unnecessary amount of packaging. Packaging can be used to represent the brand of the product, but ends up wasting a lot of resources just for that purpose. Not only is it wasteful, but it also causes problems with disposal and how easily it is to recycle. Most of it will likely end up in landfills because of how difficult is can be to recycle. Eco-design can be applied to packaging, making it easier to recycle, using less resources and avoiding waste. This eco-design can cut back on overall packaging, money and impact on the environment.
I don't really buy many products personally, but when I do I always notice how much packaging there is. There's usually so much that it makes completely no sense to me. It actually annoys me because it's a nuisance to me and it's very wasteful. But after reading this article it makes me even more angry that pretty much all of the packaging is not being recycled because there is simply not enough effort into doing it. At this point it's not surprising to me that something labeled as environmentally friendly isn't really because everything we almost everything we manufacture has some sort of impact on the environment.