Beyond Less is More
Cruising the health food section of many supermarkets invariably turns up an area dedicated to unpackaged bulk foods. Dry goods such as grains, dry fruits, and nuts reside in tall glass or plastic bins with trays, drawers or knobs for easy dispensing. Such aisles are magnets for shoppers seeking what they perceive as fresher, perhaps better quality foods at lower price points. Some shoppers also appreciate what’s missing: the eye-catching colors of branded and packaged goods in disposable packaging that offers convenience—but also contributes to the waste stream.
This plays well on a few aisles of a big store, but does it have the legs to stand on its own? Some retailers think so. Taking the lead from supermarkets and old-style U.S. “country stores,” In.gredients in Austin, Texas sells its brand-free products in bulk to customers who arrive with their own bags and containers. Forget your containers or happen to wander in and feel the need to buy some package-free oatmeal, rice or granola? No worries: In.gredients will sell you containers for your purchases. The first zero-packaging store in the world, In.gredients has been in business for two years and is joined in the U.S. by Simply Bulk Market in Longmont, Colorado, as well as sections of more mainstream grocers such as Whole Foods Market. Meanwhile, Original Unverpackt (Original Unpackaged) runs a minimum-waste model in Berlin, Germany, as have similar stores in Spain, France and Italy. In some locales, up to 80 percent of products sold come from within 45 miles of the store shelves.
Beyond Zero
While zero packaging stores appeal to a certain segment of consumers, they are really the more aggressive face of other “green” trends in packaging. Sustainability is becoming a hot topic among brand owners and packaging converters, and it is not a trivial matter. With global population expected to reach 9.5 billion by mid-century, world food production is expected to grow faster—by as much as 50 percent, making sustainable packaging practices essential. Recycling is one of the keys to sustainability, although there are real challenges recycling extruded and laminated flexible packaging. Seeing the need in this area, substrate suppliers are actively working on ways to improve barrier properties and other characteristics to facilitate recycling of flexible packages. Some new materials will reach the market within five years.
Then there’s biodegradability, which can offer broad consumer appeal for many types of packaging. NatureWorks, for example, relies on carbon instead of oil to make plastic bottles that degrade quickly. And in Italy, Bio-on uses agricultural waste to produce biodegradable packaging.
Taking a big picture approach is Newlight, a California company that takes methane (a volatile greenhouse gas) captured on farms and mixes it with various biocatalysts to produce plastic products that look and work like the familiar ones while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Although the technology isn’t new, NewLight has dramatically reduced the cost of building the biocatalyst. On the horizon is onsite methane capture at landfills and oil fields.
Beyond Food
But why stop with food products? Beneath your kitchen sink is a host of products that could have less environmental impact by using different containers. Leading the charge is Replenish, a California company that takes advantage of the fact that many products in our homes are about 90 percent water. The company’s Replenish Refill System, features a special reusable bottle and a “pod” containing a concentrated cleaning agent that basically plugs into the bottle. You supply the water. This eliminates the need to ship truckloads of products that are largely water while reducing the total production volume of single-use bottles that are thrown away.
Walmart is already using the technology for a hand soap marketed under the Cleanpath brand. Given Walmart’s broad market influence, this could initiate shifts in packaging that could reduce waste, trim transportation expenses, and help brands cultivate a greener image. It’s not hard to imagine concentrated pods of many household products being sold in branded packages, sharply reducing shipping and production costs.
Despite the unbranded appeal of stores like In.gredients and streamlined packaging like that of Replenish, branded packaging—in all its forms—is hardly about to go away. But it will change and undoubtedly expand. And as it does, it will likley become much more environmentally responsible by being sustainable, recyclable and biodegradeable.





