Trends for sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing design

by Sarah Dorkenwald

Here a cof­fee-to-go, there a fruit sal­ad or a sand­wich on the go, sushi or piz­za for din­ner — take-away prod­ucts, deliv­ery food as well as so-called con­ve­nience food pre­pared in a snack-like man­ner and in ever small­er pack­ag­ing sizes, most­ly packed in plas­tic, con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the increas­ing pack­ag­ing waste, in addi­tion to the grow­ing online trade.

The fig­ures from the Ger­man NGO Deutsche Umwelthil­fe are alarm­ing: 13 bil­lion dis­pos­able cups and pack­ag­ing are con­sumed in the to-go sec­tor in Ger­many every year. If you break down the annu­al con­sump­tion of approx. 5.8 bil­lion bev­er­age cups into one day, that’s almost 16 mil­lion cups per day. The CO2 emis­sions for the total amount of dis­pos­able waste are 830,000 tons, result­ing in 190,000 tons of waste.

And Ger­many is quite exem­plary in this respect. From Jan­u­ary 2023, reusable pack­ag­ing will be com­pul­so­ry, there is a func­tion­ing deposit sys­tem and up to 69 per­cent of house­hold waste will be recy­cled accord­ing to the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency (as of 2020). In this the recy­cling rate for plas­tic pack­ag­ing, which was pre­vi­ous­ly around 45 per­cent, is increas­ing due to the new Pack­ag­ing Act, which, among oth­er things, stip­u­lates a high­er recy­cling rate for packaging.

What pack­ag­ing solu­tions are there that offer con­vinc­ing answers to devel­op­ments such as the use of e‑commerce for­mats, mod­ern lifestyles, but also the increased demand for sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing designs?

he Munich-based com­pa­ny Recup, with its reusable deposit sys­tem, is one of the major inno­va­tors and pio­neers in this field. Through­out Ger­many, it has suc­cess­ful­ly intro­duced a reusable sys­tem for cof­fee cups and, more recent­ly, for lunch­box­es. One Recup cup can replace up to 1,000 dis­pos­able cups and one Rebowl can replace up to 500 food con­tain­ers, the start­up writes on its web­site. Espe­cial­ly in hip cof­fee roas­t­er­ies and styl­ish city cafés, the plain mint-col­ored or mocha-brown cup now seems to be a per­ma­nent fix­ture in the inventory.

The Munich-based start-up hey cir­cle  also wants to make a dif­fer­ence and has designed dis­tinc­tive box­es and bags for online ship­ping that can cir­cu­late up to 50 times before being replaced. Via par­cel return, the pack­ag­ing is returned and can be refilled. The dif­fer­ent con­tain­ers work for all con­ceiv­able con­tents, are easy to clean and fold up small, offer a brand­ing area and anti-theft pro­tec­tion through a seal or lead seal, and thus make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to reduc­ing pack­ag­ing waste in online retail.

This inno­v­a­tive e‑commerce solu­tion from bay­ern design was exhib­it­ed at FACH­PACK 2021. bay­ern design has been involved in future-ori­ent­ed, cre­ative and sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing design solu­tions for ten years and has so far pre­sent­ed care­ful­ly curat­ed spe­cial exhi­bi­tions togeth­er with Nürn­bergMesse at FACH­PACK, the inter­na­tion­al pack­ag­ing trade fair for top­ics relat­ing to pack­ag­ing, process­es and technology.

With a holis­tic view, cur­rent devel­op­ments in brand­ing, mate­r­i­al and added val­ue but also dig­i­tal­iza­tion, smart tech­nolo­gies, fin­ish­ing, trans­port and logis­tics were select­ed and pre­sent­ed. It became appar­ent that orig­i­nal and eye-catch­ing design con­cepts as well as unique pack­ag­ing inter­ac­tions are a cen­tral com­po­nent for suc­cess­ful brand­ing in an increas­ing­ly visu­al environment.

But that alone is not enough. Con­sumers demand intel­li­gent pack­ag­ing solu­tions that also take into account sus­tain­able prod­uct life cycles, resource con­ser­va­tion and waste pro­duc­tion. Cir­cu­lar pro­duc­tion con­cepts and research into alter­na­tive mate­ri­als instead of plas­tics, card­board box­es or alu­minum pack­ag­ing are becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant for companies.

At FACH­PACK 2021 and 2022, bay­ern design focused on pio­neer­ing impuls­es from mate­ri­als research as well as imple­men­ta­tion and pro­to­typ­ing in order to draw atten­tion to the var­i­ous devel­op­ment steps up to mar­ket matu­ri­ty of sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing and to pro­vide impor­tant impuls­es from design for the pack­ag­ing indus­try. Design opens up new pos­si­bil­i­ties that make sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing attrac­tive and offer added val­ue for cor­po­rate cul­ture and brand image.

Zero-waste pack­ag­ing made from algae, fun­gal mycelia or plant fibers, which can be recy­cled into nat­ur­al cycles or dis­solve com­plete­ly dur­ing use, is a con­tin­u­ing trend. Among oth­ers, the pack­ag­ing con­cept ‘Meal Bag’ by design­er Amelie Graf received spe­cial atten­tion. The edi­ble food pack­ag­ing she devel­oped for por­tion-packed mues­li or pas­ta is air­tight and mois­ture-resis­tant to a cer­tain extent. In hot water, the wrap­per, whose main ingre­di­ent is corn starch, dis­solves and can be added to var­i­ous meals, for exam­ple as a sauce binder. As a source of fiber and ener­gy, the wrap­per becomes part of the food chain instead of trou­ble­some waste. But even if you don’t use it as food, it is com­postable and weath­ers with­in a short time or can be renewed and recy­cled . A beau­ti­ful exam­ple of a closed mate­r­i­al cycle.

While Meal Bag is still a con­cept — with many awards to its name — Lon­don-based start­up Not­pla has made it to mar­ket with its alter­na­tive to sin­gle-use plas­tic for food and bev­er­age pack­ag­ing. Based on sea­weed, Not­pla has devel­oped an entire sys­tem of pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als and con­tain­ers. For exam­ple, there is Not­pla Film devel­oped to replace con­ven­tion­al flex­i­ble pack­ag­ing made from fos­sil fuels and based on bio­plas­tics. Unlike these, Not­pla Film degrades nat­u­ral­ly with­out releas­ing microplastics.

Not­pla Ooho on the oth­er hand is an unusu­al pack­ag­ing solu­tion for on-the-go hydra­tion that replaces the need for plas­tic cups and bot­tles. The trans­par­ent film in pouch form, which can be filled with liq­uids, is also cre­at­ed from algae and dis­solves 100%. Those who wish can swal­low the pack­ag­ing at the same time. Not­pla Pipette enables con­trolled pour­ing of sin­gle-dose liq­uids (e.g. cook­ing oils) and Not­pla Pearls is a sin­gle-dose sphere made from sea­weed for tooth­paste, for example.

The Soap­bot­tle by Berlin design­er Jon­na Bre­it­en­hu­ber is sim­i­lar­ly pro­gres­sive and, above all, aes­thet­i­cal­ly dis­tinc­tive. The beau­ti­ful­ly shaped con­tain­er made of soap for show­er lotion and sham­poo either dis­solves grad­u­al­ly dur­ing use or, once the bot­tle is emp­ty, can be rasped and mixed with bak­ing soda for fur­ther use as wash­ing powder.

The alter­na­tive Sty­ro­foam pack­ag­ing from the Amer­i­can com­pa­ny Eco­v­a­tive was already exhib­it­ed at FACH­PACK in 2013. Since 2007, Eco­v­a­tive has been work­ing with mycelia, the thread-like mesh of the fun­gus, to devel­op biodegrad­able com­pos­ite mate­ri­als. Their patent­ed Mush­room® Pack­ag­ing con­sists of nat­u­ral­ly inter­wo­ven hemp fibers and mycelial braids, which makes the pack­ag­ing both mal­leable and sta­ble, and can be com­post­ed after use.

The trend-set­ting idea here is to oper­ate in coex­is­tence with a healthy plan­et. The nat­ur­al, inde­struc­tible wealth of ancient liv­ing knowl­edge, what the start­up calls “The Forager’s Secret,” inspired Eco­v­a­tive (even before it became a trend) to look into myceli­um mate­ri­als and bio­fab­ri­ca­tion. Since the mate­r­i­al has sim­i­lar prop­er­ties to Sty­ro­foam, it is a seri­ous substitute.

bay­ern design has been demon­strat­ing for ten years with its spe­cial exhi­bi­tions that there are inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able alter­na­tives to con­ven­tion­al pack­ag­ing. It would be desir­able if these for­ward-look­ing pack­ag­ing inno­va­tions and design impuls­es were imple­ment­ed in exist­ing sys­tems and process­es more quick­ly than has been the case to date, in order not only to serve nich­es, but to estab­lish the great­est pos­si­ble impact towards a more sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing culture.