Green packaging: a need and an opportunity

As is happening in various sectors, the need for respecting the environment is becoming more and more important also in the field of packaging and everything concerning it, from packaging machinery to wrapping.

You only need to have a look around you to find out that all types of packaging are very used in our everyday life: everything, from food to hi-tech products, is enveloped, and you do not need to be very perspicacious to understand how much packaging is daily used – and thrown away – for various purposes.

The importance of environmental issue, a priority in the agenda of each country, is to be taken in consideration also in this sector, a sector that is often characterized by wastes that could be avoided or at least limited.

This is why eco-compatibility has become a necessity also in the field of packaging, as evidenced also by recent news about the possibility to use more eco-friendly packaging. An example? The European Union will provide contribution to the companies that will use packaging with a low environmental impact. As far as Italy is concerned, this measure is contained in a document of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, and will interest the fruit and vegetable producers that will use ergonomic packaging made with certified papers realized with fibers coming from woods that are managed in an eco-friendly way for the transportation of goods. Using this type of packaging, which is better not only from an environmental point of view, but also from the point of view of quality, might be more expensive, but these higher costs would be absorbed by the European contributions, which will hopefully work as spur for all those fruit and vegetable producers that in the future are likely to be persuaded to decide and use eco-friendly packaging.

Although eco-friendly types of packaging might cost more than the traditional ones, this does not mean that using a type of packaging that respects the environment is always more expensive, on the contrary: using packaging in an eco-friendly way might have some advantages also from an economic point of view. It is self-evident, for example, that using less packaging when it is possible also means reducing costs and not only wasting less. No wonder that bigger companies are investing a lot in this sense, studying and using new techniques that allow them to realize recyclable packaging for their products and reduce costs. Unfortunately smaller companies cannot afford investments in the research of new types of packaging, but certainly they would have many advantages using packaging in a better way.

What is certain is that the field of packaging is an important one, a field that should not be underestimated, as it represents the 1,5% of Italian GDP and has a yearly turnover of 24 billion euro as far as materials and of 4 billion as far as packaging machineries are concerned.

An important sector, a sector that needs to keep pace with the times, trying to understand the needs of the epoch we live in and find possible solutions to urgent problems.