Eco friendly packaging, minus the greenwashing

Cardboard is already one of the better packaging materials. Paper and board are recycled at far higher rates than plastic, and the fibre gets reused several times before it’s too short to be useful. So the good news is that if you’re buying a plain corrugated box, you’re mostly there already. The interesting question is what you add to it.

Recyclable is a claim about the whole box

This is the bit people miss. Board is recyclable. Board plus certain additions isn’t, because the extra material has to be separated out and usually won’t be.

• Metallic foil stamping. Small accents are generally tolerated, large foiled areas are a problem.
• Plastic lamination, which includes most gloss and soft touch finishes. A laminated box is board bonded to a plastic film.
• Plastic windows, unless the window is a compostable film or the customer removes it, which they won’t.
• Heavy glues and tapes left attached.

If recyclability is a real commitment rather than a line on the box, that rules out soft touch. We’d rather tell you that than sell you both and let you write a claim you can’t support.

The claims worth making

FSC certified

Means the fibre is traceable to responsibly managed forests, audited by a third party. This one is real, it costs a little more, and you can put the logo on your box. If you want one credential, this is the one to have.

Post consumer recycled content

Board made from material that was already used and thrown away, rather than offcuts from a factory. Ask for the percentage, because a lot of board contains some recycled content by default and it isn’t much of a claim on its own.

Water based and soy based inks

Lower solvent emissions than conventional inks and they don’t interfere with recycling. A genuine improvement, though a modest one. Worth choosing, not worth building your brand story on.

Uncoated kraft

Unbleached, unlaminated kraft is about as clean as it gets, and it happens to be cheap. It’s also the honest look that food, bath and soap brands often want anyway. The trade off is print quality: colors go warm and muted on brown board, and fine detail softens.

Claims that mean less than they sound

Biodegradable on its own is close to meaningless. Almost everything biodegrades eventually under the right conditions. Without a standard attached and a timeframe, it’s a word.

Compostable usually means industrially compostable, which needs a facility most of your customers can’t access. If you say compostable, say which kind, and be aware that a box in a landfill composts very slowly regardless.

Eco friendly and green have no definition at all. Some markets now take a dim view of unsupported environmental claims on packaging, so vague wording is becoming a legal risk as well as a credibility one. Say the specific thing you actually did instead.

The change that beats all of it

Use a smaller box. Right sizing your packaging cuts material, cuts void fill, cuts the number of trucks needed to move the same number of orders, and cuts your shipping bill. It outperforms every material swap on this page and it saves you money rather than costing you money, which is a rare combination.

Second best: design a box that doesn’t need a plastic mailer or a second outer box around it. One well specified box beats a virtuous box inside a bag.

A reasonable default

For most brands we’d suggest FSC certified board, uncoated or matte finish, water based inks, no foil, and a size that actually fits the product. That’s a genuinely defensible position, it’s affordable, and every word of it is something you can prove if a customer asks.

Have a look at kraft boxes if you want the natural look, or ask us what your current box would cost with the greener spec. Sometimes it’s cheaper. Not always, but sometimes.