Sustainability: More than Just Greed?

Sustainability is the buzzword these days. Many companies use it to help sell their products.  Case in point: I recently bought a package of Zip-Lock bags which prominently mentioned SC Johnson’s use of wind generated energy.

Companies naturally want customers to think they do this out of concern for the environment. There is an element of this and it is certainly a good thing to do. Another way of looking at it is pure greed and selfishness on the part of the manufacturer.  Smart manufacturers have been green for a century or more. Henry Ford’s “Today and Tomorrow” (1926) is almost a handbook on industrial sustainability. Example: At that time cars used a lot of wood.  Ford invented a process to convert the waste sawdust into a early plastic to make steering wheels. This and many other innovations that we would call sustainability helped Ford to reduce the price of their cars from over $900 to under $300 over 20 years.

In more recent years packagers have been looking for ways to reduce the amount of materials. One set of trends includes a shift from glass to plastic bottles, reduction in weight of plastic bottles and ultimately replacing bottles with flexible packaging.

Some of these are driven by concerns for sustainability. All of them have resulted in reduced costs. Reduced costs permit reduced prices, greater volume and greater profit.

Manufacturing of all kinds can have a heavy environmental impact and packaging is no exception. Packagers must “go green” to be good corporate citizens. In many cases, it does not impose additional costs, it generates savings.