Talking About Green

Utilising environmentally friendly materials in our daily lives is an incredibly important part of reducing our carbon footprint. Landfill sites are full of non-essential eco-unfriendly materials which needn’t have been used in the first place.

By reducing the amount of packaging we use in consumer and industrial products, we can dramatically reduce the size of our carbon footprint. Less packaging means less transportation costs, which in turn means less fossil fuels burnt. It also has the direct effect of reducing the amount of packaging that is wasted in landfill sites once the product is used.

Recycling

Another way to improve the environmental friendliness of product packaging is by utilising recycled materials, and using materials which can easily be recycled once they’ve been used. The recycling of materials has numerous benefits, including costs; recycling programs can cost substantially less than traditional waste processing programs. The reduced energy consumption involved with recycling reduces the need for burning fossil fuels, which in turn improves air and water quality due to a reduction in pollutants from traditional manufacturing processes. The versatility of modern recycling programs is huge, with the average plastic bottle being able to be converted into automobile parts, clothing, garden furniture, carpeting, or more plastic bottles! The damning statistic is that more than half of what is thrown away in to landfill sites could have been recycled.

Unfortunately it seems consumers aren’t embracing recycling as hoped. In the UK, the amount of recyclable materials that were dumped went from 134,000 tonnes in 2008, to 157,000 tonnes in 2009, and then 184,000 tonnes in 2010. This may be due to a lack of education around the importance of recycling, or it may be due to a lack of local recycling infrastructures.

Biodegradable Packaging

There are also types of packaging that are environmentally friendly due to their degradation properties. Traditional plastic shopping bags aren’t biodegradable, although paper bags are. Although paper bags aren’t suitable for every application, there are now plastic bags which are “compostable”, meaning after their use, if they are put in a landfill, they will eventually degrade, returning to a natural state. These compostable bags can be used for multiple applications, from shopping bags to bin liners, making them a very versatile product for individuals and businesses looking to reduce their environmental impact. This is especially true to retailers who use a large number of traditional plastic shopping bags.

Many purveyors of consumer products are realising that by embracing environmentally friendly packaging, they are improving not only cost efficiency, but saleability amongst the increasingly environmentally aware consumer.

For more information on Compostable Bags, you can visit Polythene UK’s website: http://www.polytheneuk.co.uk