How to Achieve More Sustainable Food Packaging

An overview of sustainable food packaging design:

• Eco-Conscious Consumers: With 82% of consumers considering sustainability a high priority, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for brands to ignore ecological impacts. Consumers expect food brands to lead with their sustainability initiatives.
• Sustainable Food Packaging: It’s about leaving a minimal environmental impact, accounting for every stage of the design, printing, and shipping process—as well as once packaging is opened and discarded.
• Picking the Right Materials: While remaining protective, sustainable food packaging materials aim to be renewable, recyclable, and/or have low environmental impact. Green options include hemp, straw, recycled cotton, post-consumer recycled paper and metalized paperboard, and casein protein.
• Paperboard vs. Plastic: Given paperboard’s lower carbon footprint and much higher recycling rate, folding cartons are usually the more environmentally conscious option for recyclable food packaging. There’s still a place for plastic containers, but it depends on several factors. 
• Recyclability of Food Packaging: While you hope your food packaging will be reused or recycled by consumers, much of it eventually reaches a landfill.
• SQF & Sustainability Certifications: Working with a printing partner certified by SQF, SFI, and FSC ensures your products are safe and packaging sustainable.

Why You Should Embrace Sustainable Packaging for Food

Among the top considerations for food packaging, sustainability is increasingly important to brands.

A 2021 report from marketing insights resource Think With Google found sustainability a high priority for 82% of consumers surveyed. Furthermore, 43% of American consumers view the environmental impact of product packaging as extremely or very important, while 4 to 7 percent of consumers are willing to pay a premium well above 10 percent, according to a 2023 report from global consulting firm McKinsey.

Consumers want to know what steps you’re taking to become a more environmentally responsible company.

By embracing sustainable food packaging, you not only foster brand loyalty among eco-friendly buyers, but generate further opportunities to create some PR buzz. It’s not uncommon for brands to be featured in news stories and shared across social media channels for moving away from single-use plastics toward greener alternatives.

Ultimately, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for brands to ignore their ecological impacts, and consumers expect food brands to lead with their sustainability initiatives.

Not doing so can leave a bad taste in their mouths.

What Is Sustainable Food Packaging?

To embrace sustainable food packaging is to reduce unnecessary materials, minimize plastics, localize supply chains, and implement sustainable alternatives when appropriate. Sustainable packaging is about leaving a minimal environmental impact, accounting for every stage of the design, printing, and shipping process—as well as once packaging is opened and discarded.

Abiding by right-size packaging principles means your brand uses only enough materials to secure and protect a product. Any more than that is wasteful—and potentially extra costly, given the so-called “air tax” for non-essential air pockets or materials.

Limiting your carbon footprint includes accounting for energy sources throughout every phase of the packaging process, including what’s used to power your warehouses, distances materials are transported, and even the carbon emissions third-party vendors contribute to the atmosphere.

Sustainable food packaging suppliers source printing substrates from responsibly managed forests. To guarantee your materials are derived from sustainable forests, look for certifications by the nonprofit Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

While many industries still rely on plastic for some packaging components, sustainable food packaging tends to rely on paperboard (which is renewable) or other green alternatives, such as substrates consisting of hemp, cotton, and other biodegradable materials. Don’t forget post-consumer recycled materials are another worthwhile alternative to any single-use substrate.

In addition to leaving a more positive environmental impact, sustainable food packaging has many business advantages, as well. Sustainable alternatives tend to have fewer toxins and allergens, which is essential for the food industry, where safe packaging is a high priority.

And perhaps most importantly, with a growing number of consumers looking for environmentally friendly options, implementing sustainable food packaging helps your brand foster strong consumer loyalty. Consumers want a brand to reflect their values and ethical commitments.

Going all in on sustainable food packaging makes it easier for consumers to make the environmentally conscious choice. Their appreciation will certainly manifest in strong brand advocacy for you.

Selecting the Right Materials

One of the most straightforward ways a brand can achieve more sustainable food packaging is to start with choosing the right materials, accounting for safety as well as sustainability.

While remaining protective, sustainable food packaging materials aim to be renewable, recyclable, and/or have low environmental impact. 

Here are just a few of the best materials for sustainable packaging:

• Hemp is the most recent trend in sustainable packaging, be it folding cartons, shelf-ready boxes, printed marketing collateral, or a variety of other substrate forms. While its slightly rougher texture might be a challenge for shiny finishes, hemp’s unique look is a clear and consistent signal of sustainability to consumers.
  
  It’s worth noting that hemp can still be expensive and isn’t entirely tree-free—the fibers relying on a small amount of paper to hold them together.
  
  
• Straw and recycled cotton fibers are a new development from Mohawk Fine Papers, Inc. While limited in their applications, they’re sustainable options for marketing collateral, stationary, and greeting cards.
  
  
• 100% recycled paper is generally the most cost-effective sustainable food packaging option, hence its popularity. Performing as well as traditional materials, it has the added benefit of reducing carbon footprints and ecological impacts.
  
  
• 100% recyclable metalized paperboard, a Unilustre® (from Unifoil) material, is a repulpable, film- and plastic-free substrate that performs like paper. It is excellent for embossing/debossing. With no plasticizers, the material also retains tamper-evident and glueability qualities similar to traditional paperboard while having excellent scoring.
  
  
• Casein is a milk protein that can be used to wrap and preserve food. In fact, given that it’s less porous than traditional plastic film, it’s both sustainable and more effective at maintaining food freshness and protection from the elements.
  
  
• Soy- and vegetable-based inks are worth implementing, as well. While not part of the substrate, these biodegradable inks can be just as effective for visual design, and less expensive than their petroleum-based counterparts. It’s hard to say no when this option is both environmentally friendly and cost effective.

Once you’ve determined your desired substrate, you’ll also want to consider whether to include barrier coatings, windowing, and airflow in your overall food packaging design.

Paperboard vs. Plastic

Choosing between folding cartons and plastic containers is not easy, economically or environmentally. The most sustainable path isn’t always clear.

Folding cartons and plastic containers have different sources, processes, and impacts on the environment. So, should you use paperboard or plastic for your food packaging?

Plastic Containers

Plastic comes from petroleum, a non-renewable resource that takes hundreds of years to decompose. Recycling and using plastic wisely is essential to reduce its environmental harm.

Plastic containers are mainly made of polyethylene, a synthetic polymer that can be molded into various shapes and sizes. You may also employ polystyrene, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate, and polyvinyl chloride in your food packaging.

Durable, lightweight, and adaptable, it’s easy to see why plastic remains a major player in food packaging. Plus, it’s economical when produced in large quantities.

Paperboard Folding Cartons

Derived from trees, a renewable resource that can be replanted and regrown, there’s a reason so many sustainable food brands turn to paperboard to protect their products.

However, trees take time to mature and can still be harvested unsustainably if forests are irresponsibly managed, damaging ecosystems. Folding cartons are made of paper, which is the product of pulping wood chips in water (and sometimes chemicals). Paper is then dried into thin sheets.

Once paper has been discarded by consumers, it decomposes and regenerates the soil (presuming it doesn’t contain harmful chemicals and isn’t rotting on top of trash in a landfill somewhere). It’s incredibly green.

Naturally, paper is more renewable than petroleum, but it also requires more energy to produce. (Don’t forget to include carbon emissions in your environmental calculations.)

Plastics take centuries to degrade, but paper has a larger carbon footprint (at least, during manufacturing). Determining their sustainability value becomes more convoluted throughout the life of a folding carton.

At the end of the day, most plastics aren’t recycled, compared to the roughly 68% of paper and paperboard products recycled annually in the United States, per a 2023 report by Statista. These plastics are then buried or incinerated, releasing toxic gasses into the atmosphere.

So, yes, plastics are more energy efficient to produce, but their carbon footprint may grow several times larger than paper when measuring its entire life cycle. Plastics are also dramatically lighter in weight compared to paper, meaning the energy needed to ship them is comparatively less.

There are other factors you may evaluate, but given paperboard’s lower carbon footprint and much higher recycling rate, folding cartons are usually the greener option for recyclable food packaging.

Effectiveness of Recyclable Food Packaging

It’s worth noting that many materials can’t be recycled infinitely. And while recyclable food packaging can find new life after being discarded by consumers, it doesn’t always end up at the recycling center. All it takes is one apathetic consumer to abbreviate your recyclable food packaging’s life by throwing it in the trash.

In fact, the national recycling rate in the United States is currently a mere 32%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with a goal of reaching 50% by 2030.

Rates are even more disheartening when you look exclusively at plastics. Between 5-6% of plastics are recycled in the United States, per a 2022 report by Beyond Plastics, a nationwide project based at Bennington College dedicated to reducing plastic waste.

So, while you hope your food packaging will be reused or recycled by consumers, much of it eventually reaches a landfill. However, by integrating recycleability into your food packaging design, you increase the chances it will see multiple uses throughout its life, before reaching its final resting place.

Each time it’s recycled means one less piece of food packaging ends up in the landfill.

Importance of SQF Certification

As you implement sustainable food packaging, be certain your printing and packaging manufacturer maintains SQF certification. This ensures that your supplier meets the highest global health and safety standards, keeping your consumers happy and healthy.

What Exactly Is SQF Certification?

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) was founded in 2000 to deal with the growing food safety problems at the end of the last century. This international program’s goal is  to enhance and harmonize food safety systems so they can nourish the expanding global population and develop markets that can provide food safely–no matter where in the world the consumer is located.

Instead of creating its own safety certifications, GFSI approves so-called “certification program owners” (CPOs), autonomous entities that meet its prescribed standards. This includes the Safe Quality Food (SQF) certification.

Manufacturers who get an SQF certification demonstrate that their food processes follow the highest global safety standards. The certification covers industry, customer, and regulatory requirements for all parts of the supply chain, from farm to fork.

The SQF Food Safety Program entails six categories of codes: primary production, food retail, manufacturing, food packaging, storage and distribution, and quality.

Benefits of Working With an SQF-Certified Food Packaging Supplier

An SQF certification is a good indicator when looking for a packaging partner.

It tells you right away that the manufacturer is capable of safely handling your food products, and its packaging is suitable for direct food contact. More importantly, it shows their dedication to quality, because the process to get certification is thorough, careful, and continuous.

If you toured their facility, you’d see signs of safety standards abound—from hair nets to handwashing stations at entrances. The plant must be almost spotless to avoid contamination.

By making SQF certification an essential part of your search for a sustainable food packaging supplier, you can be confident their food packaging solution is not only eco-friendly but enhances branding without compromising safety.

Achieving Your Sustainability Goals

Putting these principles into practice, many brands are finding creative ways to bring sustainable packaging to food. The possibilities are abundant.

When committing to a printing and packaging partner, there are several other questions you should ask regarding sustainable food packaging: How will design affect shelf life? How will packaging support branding? And, what are my design options?

Oliver has built a reputation for helping customers meet their sustainable packaging goals. We help food and beverage brands minimize resource requirements, use only responsibly sourced materials, and maximize opportunities for recovery, recycling, or reuse.  

Oliver has been recognized by SFI and FSC, certifying the company’s wood and pulp suppliers support and practice responsible forest management principles.

We also understand that what’s “the most sustainable” varies from customer to customer. You might find, for example, that a hemp-based folding carton is ideal for your short-run job. However, depending on several factors, a traditional paperboard may prove to be a more sustainable and cost-effective choice for larger print jobs.

A lot of analysis goes into determining that. And Oliver will gladly help you identify which is right for you. 

With Oliver’s guidance, you’ll find it’s never been easier to deliver food and beverage products to large markets while embracing more environmentally conscious approaches.

Oliver Inc. is the nation's leading independent supplier of custom paperboard packaging solutions. Equipped with a commitment to excellence and advanced printing technology, we are eager to help your brand integrate sustainability principles into your next packaging design. Contact us today to learn more.