The Road To Sustainable Packaging:

Turning RoadBlocks into Opportunities

The world of sustainable packaging continues to be explored by businesses worldwide. As consumers continue to educate and practice sustainability, companies are pursuing eco-friendly, recyclable, and biodegradable packaging alternatives, providing a valuable experience to both their consumers and the environment.

As businesses move towards eco-friendly packaging solutions, they are also faced with many challenges. The cost of the initial investment, the cost of raw materials, meeting renewable expectations, cost of machinery and production, product protection, and maintaining loyalty with consumers are a few challenges businesses face.

August 23, 2022

Join us below as we share how our HB International team is taking advantage of these challenges and transforming them into opportunities for our customers:

Roadblock: Hurdling Expenses
One of the most significant challenges businesses face is the required financial investment. While sustainable packaging is becoming increasingly popular, those businesses stepping towards investment know that the initial costs are incredibly steep. Acquiring the necessary raw materials, funding the development of new technology, and investing the time, money, and resources for this process is expensive. While it may seem like the ‘right’ move to make and, given the latest popular packaging trends amongst consumers are environmentally friendly, companies realize that they cannot afford to invest, which in turn causes them to be overlooked or left behind.

Start Small
What do we recommend to our customers? Take on one small project at a time. Rather than redesign all of your packaging, steer your investment towards one project. First, taking on one project will provide enough exposure to your consumers to show them that you’re in the process of sustainability. It offers a sneak peek as you continue to move through your product packaging lineup. Second, it also permits you to work at your own pace and implement your timeline. Taking your time encourages your business to establish a supplier and work towards developing other product packaging solutions. The manufacturing process will allow consistency and the ability to explore even more sustainable products and opportunities further down the road.

Roadblock: Increasing Consumer Costs
The initial investment that any business makes towards sustainability is expensive. As the demand for sustainable products continues to grow by popular demand, resources remain limited as this production area is still very new. With sustainable resources and production capacity not as readily available as it is for other materials and manufacturers, this tends to drive up consumer cost prices. The investment in designing machinery, raw materials, production processes, etc., directly affects consumers’ final cost.

Stay Consistent for Your Consumers

The good news? Most consumers remain loyal to the brands they love. If they’re eco-conscious consumers, they will genuinely appreciate seeing your efforts towards becoming more sustainable and will likely continue to support your business and product, regardless of the cost. Many consumers today are looking for products and companies that exemplify the same values as their own. By investing in eco-friendly products, most consumers are willing to pay extra for products that reflect their sustainable beliefs. Consumers want consistency. If they already like using your product, don’t change it too much. Your job is simply to create the same valuable experience while shifting towards a more sustainable option.

Roadblock: It Might Not All Be 100% Recyclable

There are indeed “shades of gray” regarding a product’s recyclability. Understanding every aspect of your product’s life cycle is critical to producing, marketing, and selling sustainable products. You need to be familiar with any blends or multilayer packaging material from raw material, the manufacturing process, the product’s assembly, and packaging. For instance, if a paper tube is bound with a non-recyclable glue or particular wrapping, that prevents it from being 100% recyclable. Items such as flexible pouches consisting of blended (multilayer packaging) may be constructed with certain non-recyclable films that prevent the pouch from being 100% recyclable. Whatever the case, it’s necessary to understand your product’s materials and manufacturing processes.

Educate Yourself & Your Customers
Our team suggests looking for ways to ensure that your product is manufactured and assembled in a way that optimizes the materials to meet recycling regulations. Start by investigating the components of raw materials and the processes required for production. Ensure that you are familiar with recycling/biodegradable regulations to understand better how your product can be recycled or reused as intended.

Roadblock: Protect Your Product
While sustainable packaging may seem like the best route, it’s paramount to understand if it will compromise the product. If you’re a US-based company whose packaging requires overseas shipping, you’ll want to investigate sustainable options for your product’s protection. Let’s face it; if you’re investing the money into sustainable packaging, you will want to ensure it’s protected when it ships. More specifically, you will want to research sustainable, eco-friendly options for shipping. Your consumers won’t appreciate a sustainable product packaged with non-recyclable material. It kind of defeats the point, doesn’t it?

Keep it Eco-Friendly
Just as sustainable packaging is becoming increasingly popular, so are eco-friendly shipping supplies. Sustainable packaging includes biodegradable starch foam sheets, biodegradable packing peanuts, recyclable corrugated boxes, recyclable mailers, and compostable cellophane bags, to name a few, and depending on your product, there are a wide variety of options available to you and your supplier to determine the best environmentally friendly packaging options for your product.

How Can HB International Assist Your Sustainable Journey?

Sustainable products will continue to increase in their demand, inviting more companies to invest in becoming more environmentally friendly with their products. If you want to make the switch to becoming more sustainable, do your research before jumping in. As a Global Sourcing Agency and working with various customers in different industries, it is our responsibility as an outsourcing company to provide our customers with the education necessary for taking on these projects. As sustainability continues to grow by popular demand, our packaging experts and suppliers are investing in education, manufacturing supplies, resources, and capacity to ensure we provide the best service, cost-efficient, and high-quality products for you and your consumers.

Are you ready to make a sustainable investment? We’re here for the long haul! Let’s start with one project together. Fill out the form below and let us know how we can help assist your sustainable journey!