In recent 10 years, sustainability or green packaging has become a hot topic in packaging industry. Sustainability has penetrated into all aspects of packaging driven by retailer requirements, public awareness, economic pressures (especially petroleum products) and government policies. Appropriate packaging is undoubtedly necessary and beneficial, but for the protection, convenience, communication and decoration functions, excessive packaging, that is, excessive packaging, makes packaging go to the other extreme. Waste is now an indispensable component in the life cycle of packaging and products. However, some insiders believe that sustainable packaging is only an adjective and terminology, no longer related to the quality of packaging itself, and has gradually evolved into over-packaging, causing a series of controversies.
    Sustainable Packaging: Virtual or Realistic?
    On sustainable packaging, Dennis Salazar, president and co-founder of Salazar Packaging, said on his blog, "One of the problems facing the plastic packaging industry is consumer awareness."
    "There are some people in the society who are anti-plastic products. They do not accept any form of plastic packaging products, and they are very suspicious of sustainable packaging products. This is the accumulated bias. That's what Salazar said.
    Meanwhile, Joan Heins, a freelance expert and packaging industry consultant, said, "When it comes to sustainable green plastic packaging, some consumers don't know the news. And companies have not educated consumers about what green packaging is made of, why we need it, what you can do with it and so on. As an industry enterprise, if you want to get more consumers, change their prejudices, and make the sustainable packaging industry have a broader development space, you should pay more attention to consumer awareness, packaging practicability, the maximum sustainability of the entire supply chain and recyclability after use.
Recently, a report recently released by PWC, a financial services company, pointed out, "Sustainable packaging: virtual or real?" At present, many manufacturers do not focus on the "real" problem of packaging, affecting the sustainable development of packaging industry. Retailers, manufacturers and consumers, including Federal Packaging, Procter & Gamble, Nestle and Rexam, all said that the term sustainable packaging should be eliminated, and the trend in the future should be from "over-packaging" to the maximum sustainability and recyclability of the entire supply chain in the packaging industry.
    The conclusion of the PWC report research: nowadays, "sustainable packaging" as a term is no longer the basis for judging the quality of packaging. The report points out that the future development of sustainable packaging industry should focus on practicality and post-use sustainability, rather than packaging itself. In response, Rich Hall, the head of PWC, said, "Sustainable packaging industry is developing in four main areas: efficient products, efficient packaging, efficient transportation efficiency and efficient solutions."
    "With the development of intelligent packaging, non-petrochemical plant plastics, drives and so on, the whole packaging supply chain will be more efficient and effective packaging solutions will evolve. This is a considerable progress, many small businesses and business giants have invested huge amounts of money in their packaging supply chain and can be recovered after use, thus more "sustainable", phrase sustainable packaging will no longer exist.