Tips on Green Packaging by Wendy Jedlicka
(Independent Designers Network)

l. If you can’t find what you want, make it yourself. Many mills, manufacturers and converters do custom runs - if you meet their minimum orders. For fairly large orders, consider specifying a tree-free corrugated or paperboard, or a special plastics mix featuring high post-consumer recycled (PCR) content.

2. Tree-free papers are great for user-instructions or inserts. Their costs can be competitive with high post-consumer content recycled or some virgin wood pulp stocks and offer new folding/bindery opportunities due to fiber characteristics.

3. Make your own label stock. This is very reasonable and can be done by most label makers in fairly small quantities. Nearly any lightweight paper makes good label stock and can be affixed with a benign adhesive. Consider using a bio-polymer or natural latex adhesive.

4. Designers can use their expertise to help small clients. For example, there are several retail paperboard packaging suppliers that carry PCW content products, as well as scrapbooking stores that carry packaging add-ons. Small “custom” packaging runs are possible simply by choosing an appropriate off-the-shelf stock box, adding a custom (environmentally preferable) overlabel, and some savvy eye-grabbers from a scrapbook store. Very little investment required.

5. Glass and metals packaging. The glass and metal industries are proud of their recycling rates, and, often, municipalities find recycling these materials to be a profit center rather than a drain on their budget, as regular trash removal is. These industries also enjoy good overall consumer perception and spend money on educational campaigns to encourage the consumer to recycle and buy recycled goods.

However, most glass and metals packaging industries have not felt it necessary to offer information about the recycled content of materials with any certainty for inclusion on package labels, as is done for paperboard (and now some plastics). Their collective stance has been that the process is too complex - blends of virgin and recycled materials vary batch by batch on the quality and availability of the ingredients at hand. Thus it is extremely difficult to track recycled content.

The plastics and paperboard industries face similar problems. But as examples in the book have shown, high post-consumer recycled plastic (PCR) content disclosure is possible. If suppliers can be convinced to improve their materials accounting practices to tackle and track this recycled content, others should be able to as well.

Suppliers of glass or metals packaging are not usually the manufacturers of sheet steel/aluminum, or molders of glass. Because of this, the best way to find the right supplier/manufacturer is to review the industry Web sites (all offer lists of manufacturers/suppliers), and take the time to interview prospective vendors for their compatibility with your packaging goals. In addition, seek out vendors willing to tailor production to your specifications. Sometimes all that’s needed to change an industry is for the customer to ask.