BPF Report Explains How Sustainable Packaging Design Works Across the Supply Chain

The British Plastics Federation (BPF) has today released a report that was developed from a sustainable design workshop featuring packaging experts from across the supply chain. Sustainable Design for Plastic Packaging describes the decision-making processes involved in developing new, sustainable plastic packaging and also includes a set of ‘principles for eco-design’.

The BPF’s Sustainable Design Workshop included representatives from across the packaging supply chain including brands, retailers, material suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, waste processors, NGOs and academics. The resulting report is not a BPF policy document but reflects the range of varying views represented at the workshop.

The workshop attendees identified several key principles for sustainable design including ‘make designs simple’, ‘use widely recycled materials where possible’ and ‘use easily separable components’, amongst a range of other top-level tips to reduce the environmental impact of plastic packaging. Sustainable Design for Plastic Packaging also illustrates in detail the key organisations and teams involved when a new item of plastic packaging is in development, highlighting the point at which they influence decisions.

The report states that in practice sustainable packaging design can mean designing to prioritise one or more of the following:

• Ease of recyclability
• Resource efficiency
• Inclusion of recycled content
• Reuse
• Environmentally beneficial consumer behaviour (such as portion control to prevent food waste)

BPF Director General Philip Law comments:

It is important the industry continues the great strides already made in developing sustainable plastic packaging. We will continue our close collaboration with stakeholders along the supply chain to ensure we help encourage best design practices, and to help develop new and even more sustainable plastics packaging in the years to come. These and other efforts by the BPF will continue to ensure we play our part in making a circular economy for plastics a reality.

Sustainable Design for Plastic Packaging is part of a range of work the BPF in this area, which includes the release of PackScore – a tool for brands, retailers and designers to use at the earliest stages of packaging design – and its work with RECOUP in launching a Recyclability By Design summary guide.

The full report is available here or below.