In recent times, the campaign for environmental sustainability has been on the rise. Carbon emissions are damaging the atmosphere, water bodies are overflowing their banks, and these are issues that concern all of humanity. To sustain the planet, all hands have to be on deck. There is no better time to pursue green practices than now, as the earth could degenerate greatly in the future if nothing is done about the current global situation.

Eco-friendly Packaging is, no doubt, one of the best ways individuals and businesses can help preserve planet earth. The future looks better with eco-friendly packaging.

Below are some reasons why you should invest in eco-friendly packaging:

1. Eco-Friendly Packaging is Cheaper Than Traditional Packaging

Everyone, no matter how rich, loves to save costs. In other words, if people (including businesses) had a get-it-free magic wand, they would always prefer waving it to touching the money in the bank.

Businesses spend a lot of money on packaging materials, and they are more than ready to embrace any packaging material or process that is more cost-effective than what they have. That is exactly what eco-friendly packaging offers.

Here are some of the ways eco-friendly packaging helps businesses to save cost:

Eco-friendly Packaging minimizes the amount of packaging material

The smaller and more simple your packaging, the cheaper the per-unit cost of packaging. This is a very important consideration every business must make to save on unnecessary packaging material.

As your per-unit packaging material cost decreases, your long-term ROI increases whether you’re aware of it or not. This is one reason you should opt for sustainable packaging options instead of traditional packaging.

Sustainable packaging materials are much lighter than other forms of packaging

Using eco-friendly materials provides more lightweight shipping options for you. And as you might know, shipping costs are mostly determined by the gross weight of the material shipped.

Alternatives like paper, cotton, jute, hemp, starch-based, natural fiber, and composite materials provide more lightweight shipping options than you could ever imagine.

Is it possible to package with eco-friendly materials without spending a fortune? Absolutely! It’s cheaper than most traditional alternatives.

Amount of Energy Used in Production and Disposal

The energy requirement for producing eco-friendly materials is much lower than that used to produce traditional packaging materials. More fuel is burned to manufacture traditional packaging, not to mention the cost of labor and machinery used in the process.

Eco-friendly packaging makes sure that green packaging practices are adhered to, starting from the extraction of the materials down to the final packaging itself. This minimizes the amount of energy spent on the production of the packaging material.

For biodegradable products, it is much easier to dispose of them without worrying about whether they would be harmful to the environment, and there is no need to invest in heavy-duty machines, fuel, and labor to recycle them.

On the other hand, recyclable materials such as recyclable paper, cardboard, and wraps can help you to cut down on energy costs for waste disposal or for sourcing those products from the scratch.

Reusable eco-friendly packaging materials allow customers to keep and use packaging materials for a while, either for their day-to-day activities or for subsequent purchases. In the end, such materials save costs for you and our customers while helping you preserve the environment.

line art of a person holding a shopping bag with a green recycling symbol on it
Photo Credit: Saydung89

Reduction of Carbon Footprint

The use of eco-friendly materials helps to reduce carbon emissions to the atmosphere and protect the ozone layer. Eco-friendly Packaging employs other methods to cut down on carbon-releasing industrial processes that destroy the planet.

Minimizing the carbon concentration is, of course, one of the major reasons you should invest in eco-friendly packaging, because&emdash;let’s face it&emdash;it is one of the major causes of the deteriorating environmental condition.

The cost implications of a degenerating environment eventually bounce back to you and your business. Extra facilities, exorbitant health costs, and natural disaster-influenced relocations would be reduced if businesses begin to invest more in eco-friendly packaging.

open cardboard packaging box with a QR code on the front and a recycling symbol on the lid
Photo Credit: Arka

2. Eco-Friendly Packaging Boosts Your Brand Story

In today’s business era, brand loyalty is determined by a lot of factors, and intelligent businesses try as much as possible to integrate the solutions to customers’ problems and answers to their questions into their brand story. This has been working as a powerful brand strategy.

Your customers expect you to be sensitive to the current global climatic situation and pursue green practices. The sustainability campaign is virtually everywhere and people are beginning to take it more personally, and they should.

Eco-friendly packaging is a silent way of selling your brand to your customers as respectable and trustworthy. Trust is one very rare commodity, especially in the marketplace.

Customers need to trust your brand before you can earn their loyalty, and a little trust booster for you will be your ability to adapt your branding to the ever-changing environmental and climatic conditions through eco-friendly packaging.

Adrift from traditional packaging to sustainable packaging may come as a welcome surprise to your customers. The interesting part of it is that nobody has anything to lose; it’s a win both financially and environmentally, and your brand gets viewed from a more valuable lens.

3. Expand Your Customer Base With Eco-Friendly Packaging

In the near future, green practices are going to take over the global business environment more than what we see today, and the number of consumers that will choose a product based on how sustainable the packaging materials are will increase almost geometrically.

Investing in eco-friendly packaging is very important to have a greater customer reach and keep your present customers. Here are why eco-friendly packaging determines how numerically strong your customer base becomes:

Better enlightenment on eco-friendly practices

Governments, the media, institutions of learning, NGOs, and even businesses have joined forces to increase the awareness of how far green practices can go in saving a degenerating environment.

People are now more interested in saving the environment than enjoying the momentary satisfaction of a non-eco-friendly material to their own (eventual) detriment. Consumers are now more willing to pay for sustainable packaging.

If you ignore the current sustainability trend as a business owner, you might as well wave most of your existing customers and a good number of prospective ones goodbye.

Businesses spring forth every day, and yours is just one out of the millions of businesses your customers can patronize. Bearing the current marketplace competition in mind, an easy, cheap, and sustainable way to remain a major market player is to invest in eco-friendly packaging.

Eco-Friendly Packaging Is Healthier for Human Beings Than Traditional Packaging

There is a great likelihood people would not buy your product if the packaging contains substances that are toxic to their health. This is one of the things most customers pay attention to when purchasing consumer goods.

If your business produces consumer goods, then you should be more eco-friendly in your packaging than all other business types, because you deal in something that is directly ingested by your consumers. Petrochemical packaging should be minimized to the lowest degree or completely avoided.

Medicine has attributed a lot of diseases, especially cancers to petrochemical packaging when used to package food. That is why every step towards eco-friendly packaging is a step away from unhealthy chemical and synthetic materials that are harmful to the body.

To rid your customers of allergens and toxins from traditional packaging, naturally sourced eco-friendly alternatives should be used to package edibles. This passes the message to your customers that you are interested in their health and general wellbeing, and you have yourself more loyal customers, and greater referrals.

rectangular pieces of torn corrugated cartboard
Photo Credit: Bluebudgie

4. Recyclable, Reusable, and Biodegradable Packaging Options

Most businesses spend the most on energy for the production and disposal of packaging materials. This is mostly the case in traditional packaging where single-use, non-recyclable, and non-biodegradable packaging materials are used.

Eco-friendly packaging offers more sustainable packaging options. Recyclable plastics reduce the amount of waste clogging drainage systems and water bodies, not to mention that it reduces wastage of materials as they are recycled and used again.

For instance, if you run an eCommerce business where customers return goods for different reasons, you wouldn’t need to outrightly dispose of the packaging if they are recyclable or reusable. This saves you a lot of time, material, and production energy.

Cotton bags and other natural alternatives constitute reusable packaging options especially when they are branded or designed to be aesthetically appealing. A well-branded reusable packaging can also be a very effective brand advertisement tool that your business can leverage to sell your brand’s message and attract more customers.

Naturally sourced eco-friendly packaging materials are finding very great use in companies because they decompose easily after they complete their life cycle and are disposed of. They are also, as you saw earlier, the healthiest alternative for consumer goods businesses.

Biodegradable and recyclable packaging helps us to cut down on the inorganic content of the environment which has greatly been upped by traditional packaging. Instead of using most of your resources to dispose or produce packaging materials, you can use biodegradable and recyclable packaging to save more money for other production processes and running costs for your business.

flat white box with a uniquely patterned yellow tape across it
Photo Credit: Arka

5. More Versatile Packaging

Traditional packaging is what many would call stereotypical, at least to a great extent. Eco-friendly packaging adds spice to packaging&emdash;creating room for numerous types, textures, and designs of packaging.

The average customer already has a fixed image in their mind, how their product packaging should appear&emdash;most probably as a cube or cuboid with a touch of petrochemical fillers or supports. However, sustainable materials facilitate versatility in packaging designs way beyond the norm.

The versatility of eco-friendly packaging makes it the most economical and ideal for businesses that deal across different product lines, whether consumables, pharmaceutical products, electronics, clothing, jewelry, etc.

Instead of producing packaging materials from the source to fit different products, the same type of eco-friendly material with different designs or branding styles can serve.

Conclusion

Global warming issues are very critical. Atmospheric heat has increased drastically. If it gets to its crescendo, then the earth must have broken apart before we realize it. Among all other green practices, you can contribute your quota to environmental sustainability by using eco-friendly packaging materials to pack your products. This can help you expand your customer base by endorsing your brand as eco-friendly, consumer-oriented, responsible, and trustworthy.

Here’s more: you can preserve health, save a lot of money on production and disposal of packaging, cut down on your carbon footprint, and design versatilely by using eco-friendly materials.

Want to optimize your online business? Contact us for a consultation and we'll help you consider all your choices to make sure your store lives up to your values.

Phillip Akhzar holding a director's clapperboard

Phillip Akhzar
Founder, Arka

We’re brand experience experts with over a decade in the packaging industry. We’ve helped over 2,000 clients in 950 cities worldwide upgrade their unboxing experiences and wow their customers!