We’ve grown accustomed to accepting wildly overdesigned and unnecessary packaging because brands want their products to stand out on the shelf—and, perhaps inspired by politics, because the one who shouts the loudest gets the most attention.
In reality, consumers have shifted their decision-making criteria about product purchases to include more than efficacy and cost. We are now approaching a tipping point in our addiction to plastics in packaging, as more legislators put plastics on the agenda and consumers become more informed about the challenges brought on by plastics.
However, despite learning more about the health impacts of forever chemicals used in the production of plastics and the health threats from microplastics everywhere, consumers still struggle to identify the plethora of plastic polymer types. Waste management systems are fragmented and simply not capable of discerning, separating and collecting all those different plastics, despite niche efforts by startups like Glacier.
I’ve never met anyone who enjoys taking the trash out, so the more packaging waste a product creates, the trashier it’s perceived. The question for brands is whether they want to be ahead of the game or play catch-up.
If you want to relax about legislative changes (like those recently seen in Europe), score big with consumers (especially Gen Z), avoid being at the mercy of global polymer producers and outplay supply chain disruptions (as seen during the pandemic and the recent wars in Ukraine and the Middle East)—then you’ll want to get on board with at least one of these four strategies for weaning your brand off plastics.
Remove
As Ludovic du Plessis, CEO of French vineyard Champagne Telmont, said, “The best packaging is no packaging.” So the first question we should ask ourselves is: Do we really need this?