Sustainable Packaging: Eco-Friendly and Unbreakable

Sustainability is steadily gaining in importance for consumers. They want ethically and ecologically impeccable products, packaged in a resource-conserving manner that nevertheless ensures their perfect condition when purchased. This is a major challenge to packaging producers, as the industry wants to save on materials without compromising the stability of the packaging in any way.

The Anglo-Dutch consumer goods group Unilever, owner of international brands such as Domestos household cleaner and Dove soap, is pursuing an ambitious strategy. It plans to double its worldwide sales from the current Euro 40 billion by 2020, and simultaneously to halve its carbon dioxide emissions by improving efficiency in packaging and production. Moreover, Unilever is assuming greater social responsibility. By 2020, for instance, it aims to have integrated half a million small farmers and traders in developing countries into its supply chain. “We intend to be a sustainable company in every sense of the word,” says Unilever CEO Paul Polman.

Unilever’s primary motivation is not the conservation of nature, however, but economic success. For many consumers, sustainability has become an important purchasing criterion. Buyers who formerly seldom inquired about origin, type of production and packaging now put a high priority on ecologically and morally ‘clean’ goods. U.S. market analyst Pike Research estimates that global sales with sustainable packaging will almost double between 2009 and 2014, from $88 to 170 billion. “The environmental awareness of consumers has significantly increased as a consequence of the climate debate,” explains Pike Research President Clint Wheelock.

Lifestyles are becoming greener

In addition to climate protection, social aspects play an increasingly important role. Modern consumers want to lead a more healthy life, and therefore value natural food products that are absolutely safely packaged and have a pure taste. For this client group, it is a matter of growing importance that product manufacturers demonstrate social engagement and offer “fair trade” goods. “We are seeing a trend towards ethical consumerism,” declares analyst Jens Lönneker of the Cologne market research company Rheingold. He has observed that fair trade is firmly established among LOHAS (consumers who aspire to a Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability). Now it is spreading to the “+18 year olds”, who prefer fair trade beer or lemonade in chic bottles over conventional soft drinks or lager.