Packaging Goes Back to Nature

Consumer demand is driving development of recycled, recyclable, biodegradeable, and biocompostable packaging. Remember when consumer pressure forced McDonalds to stop using CFCs in its take-out containers? Scrutiny of packaging and expectations of environmental responsibility hardly eased up since then. With the ozone hole on the mend, focus has turned to how packaging contributes to fossil fuel, energy, and landfill use. By some estimates, about 200,000 barrels of oil daily go into plastic packaging materials. Plastic houses 53% of all goods. The argument that plastics choke landfills and will never degrade is well known. Recycling is feasible for some plastics, but fewer consumers have access to plastic recycling than to glass and metal services. Paper and cardboard packaging hold 25% of shipped goods. Both materials are recyclable and biodegradeable, but typical household garbage is still 6.4% paper packaging. • Companies and customers continue to look for packaging materials that don't harm the environment. • Packaging from bagasse, polylactic acid, paper pulp, and even polyethylene can be composted. Treading Lightly, Machine Design, Aug. 9, 2007, discusses tools for designing with green plastics. In the last decade, companies with goods to package have developed strategies to ease the impact packaging has on the environment. One corporate example is . The company's environmental guidelines prohibit the use of heavy metals, PVC, and ozone-depleting materials in its packaging and require that all packaging be recyclable and marked as such. Many packaging companies have gone in a similar direction. More environmentally friendly technologies that were previously too expensive to develop, like plastics made from corn, are looking more attractive in the face of higher oil prices. Newspapers are one of the most commonly recycled materials, and the price of baled recycled paper has stayed relatively flat in recent years. , St. Louis, uses 100% recycled newsprint in