Clearly, the most sustainable packaging is no packaging at all, and the guiding principles of REDUCE, REUSE, and RECYCLE are widely accepted across the packaging community. REDUCE should not be misinterpreted as making the packaging as lightweight as possible, as this often results in single-use items (e.g., a paper coffee cup or thin plastic bag), which leads to significant issues like microplastics. “Reduce” should solely mean avoiding the use of packaging whenever possible. The best we can do in the packaging community is to make ourselves obsolete. The rise of convenience food and e-commerce home delivery has unfortunately led to a significant increase in single-use packaging in recent years, which is a concerning trend for sustainable packaging. This is actually the root cause of why packaging has become a major problem.
My personal favorite is the REUSE model, which represents true circularity to me. However, for this to work, packaging must be designed for reuse, which may require making it more durable—potentially the opposite of “reduce.” This requires a well-established circular end-to-end return supply chain. With each cycle in a circular chain, packaging typically loses some properties, such as stability, cleanliness, and marketability. After a certain number of cycles, it can no longer be reused.
Only then does the RECYCLE part come into play, requiring the material to be mechanically processed (e.g., shredded paper, plastics), usually with higher CO² emissions. Many European countries have implemented taxes and mandated recycling rates for small consumer packaging to give value to used plastics, paper, etc., and encourage a circular chain. While this is a positive step, I believe the reuse model should still take precedence over recycling. For example, drinking one coffee every day for a year would result in 365 disposable paper coffee cups versus using one durable coffee mug made of thicker HDPE plastics or ceramics. It’s easy to see which option is more sustainable.
To summarize, the guiding principles in the packaging community—Reduce, Reuse, Recycle—are key to sustainability. However, they should not be misinterpreted, as our goal should be to avoid a linear economy and move toward true circularity.
