Toby Lane, product and applications specialist at Industrial Physics, discusses how packaging professionals are being driven to innovate and explores the underlying costs of these decisions which must be considered
T0Â understand what is driving the significant level of innovation that we see in the industry today, and the impact that this is having on packaging, we conducted an international survey of packaging professionals.
Our research confirmed a strong, sector-wide desire to explore new developments in packaging (96%), with material choice (53%), production processes (51%) and material reduction (49%) revealed as the biggest areas of development for packaging innovation in the next five years.
However, whilst in many cases, the innovations developed are a positive step for the industry, new approaches to packaging manufacturing and testing are not without their challenges.
What is driving innovation?
Sustainability was revealed as one of the top innovation goals (55%) for packaging innovation, with recyclability (60%) and waste reduction (58%) also scoring highly.
Unsurprisingly, packaging professionals revealed one of the biggest trends in the industry currently is the replacement of plastics in favour of alternative materials. 57% of packaging professionals are reducing and replacing plastic, with half of the survey respondents citing that this is taking place in a quest to be more sustainable. When we look more closely at materials that are growing in popularity, biodegradable material (47%) was cited as a top focus for investment across sectors. Organic material (54%) and paper (43%) also scored highly for offering the most potential for new packaging mediums.
Should you swap to more sustainable materials?
While the shift towards using more sustainable materials is a welcome one, manufacturers must evaluate the broader impact of material choices before making rash decisions. For example, swapping from plastic to paper can be perceived as a clear sustainable swap because of its recyclable quality. However, in an area such as food packaging where the paper requires a coating to maintain the product’s quality and safety, the coating renders the product unrecyclable and can also be harmful to the environment when its chemicals enter the water system.
Similarly, switching from plastic to glass bottles in the beverage industry can be perceived as a sustainable move. However, the increase in fuel consumption and carbon emissions due to the material’s weight must be factored into decisions to calculate the true environmental cost. Â
What about testing new materials?
In the beverage industry, rather than moving away from plastics entirely, many manufacturers are opting for a more sustainable type of plastic, recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Created using a combination of recycled materials and virgin materials, rPET can be recycled up to ten times and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 79%, requiring less energy to produce when compared with virgin PET. Yet, it is not without its challenges either.
During the recycling process, as materials become more processed, there becomes less homogeneity in the polymer chain length and the individual molecules. During testing, this means that there will be more variance in behaviour which can also impact the data sheets and lead to whole batch failures which are very costly.
Since packaging must adhere to standards to ensure its safety and quality, this creates a new level of complexity. Whilst result variance does not necessarily suggest that there is an issue, more testing is required for new materials to collect a larger data set and understand what qualifies as a pass. Whether manufacturers choose to do this in-house or outsource testing, this will require a significant investment of both time and money.
Overall, the innovations currently being introduced to the global packaging landscape are positive and stand to help manufacturers, laboratories, and production lines meet the requirements of the end consumer. However, as the research revealed, the decision to innovate and make significant changes such as a material swap must be thought out with environmental costs in mind as well as monetary.
