Unboxing The Future With Sustainable Packaging Innovation
HP News, Thursday, August 24,2023
Companies are innovating to create eco-friendly packaging made from materials that can be composted or recycled and come in almost any shape they can dream up.
Giant cardboard boxes, puffy plastic air pillows, Styrofoam, packing peanuts, polystyrene bags, and plastic wrap. Consider, too, what's discarded from consumables: tray liners, clamshells, egg and milk cartons, and plastic soda bottles, to name a few.
We're drowning in packaging - some 82.2 million tons of it is produced annually in the United States alone. Our pollution problem isn't only about the stuff we consume, it's the stuff around the stuff that we consume. While packaging materials tend to be short-lived in our households before heading to the landfill, they're waste products that are likely to stay there for close to eternity, or else become litter that eventually finds its way into the ocean.