Sustainability, environmentally friendly, and “green” are becoming the popular words in commerce
and society. As many industries and markets are declining, for example newspapers; what
can companies do to make sure that they make survive the next few decades? One way is to look
into making a company products as sustainable and green as possible.
One area that is simply not going to disappear is consumer packaging. However, this area needs
to appeal to a constantly more informed consumer so that the product continues to sell. This
study explored what the consumer perceives as being green packaging and compared that to what
some green packages manufacturers are creating. This study investigated what actually makes a
package green and how that compares to what consumers believe and what manufacturers are
doing.
Consumers are often influenced by pop culture and, therefore, their idea of green may be determined
by what is currently popular. For example, a product bottled in glass is seen as being
organic, fresh, and manufactured by an environmentally friendly company. However, while glass
itself is very sustainable, it is heavier than plastic and has much more expensive transportation
costs. It is difficult to determine what condition is more damaging to the environment; fuel for
transportation or waste in the landfill. There are many other similar situations where the green
solution may be difficult to determine. In these cases, the consumer may not actually know what
is more green. Consumers will tend towards whatever thought is popular no matter what may actually
be green. Consumers are also swayed by what is written on the package describing how the
package is green. Lastly, the consumer idea of green may be simply what packaging is recyclable
or reusable.
Out of necessity, many manufacturers probably try to appeal to what the consumer believes to be
green. Companies ought to spend money on research to find the most environmentally friendly
options. There are cases of companies having traded a reusable package for one that is not reusable
because the carbon footprint of manufacturing the non-reusable package was smaller than
that of the reusable one. While the company may not have been appealing to the consumer’s idea
of green, this company was willing to spend the time and money to make an informed decision to
be sustainable. This is what companies ought to be doing. However, this study explored manufacturers
tendancy to simply appeal to the consumer no matter what packaging may be more green.
Finally, this study investigated what actually makes a package green. This probably depends on
the situation, as the case with the glass packaging, and hopefully is determined by the company
for their specific product through research. In the case of companies that are actually being as
green as possible, they are probably doing comparison studies and relying on what experts in the
packaging field are saying.
The purpose of this study was to expand knowledge of what green is and to enable making intelligent
choices about packaging. The purpose included bringing to light to the many misconceptions
that consumers have about what is good for the environment.