Packaging ecodesign

Every year, some thirteen million tonnes of packaging are used in France, including five million by households. Packaging is designed to protect the wide variety of products it contains and to facilitate logistics. Packaging designers were quick to incorporate the fight against product waste into their designs. These were the very beginnings of eco-design.

Then, manufacturers worked on the weight of packaging to avoid wasting raw materials and control costs. They did the same for packaging volume, chasing empty space to reduce unnecessary transport.

In 1998, the eco-design of packaging became an obligation for designers under French law, in application of the European directive published four years earlier. From now on, the aforementioned good industrial practices are to be generalized, heavy metals that have become undesirable are to be eliminated, and the end-of-life of packaging is to be considered right from the design stage.

Recycling channels were still in their infancy at the time, with the exception of glass, where local initiatives had been underway since the 1970s. Indeed, the two eco-organizations, Éco-Emballages and Adelphe (now Citeo), in charge of managing the national collection, sorting and recycling system, had only been approved four years earlier, in 1998. Collection was gradually being set up by local authorities, while sorting centers and recycling plants were being created. It was therefore very difficult for packaging designers to understand these channels in order to work on the recyclability of trays, cans, bottles and other containers.

Ecodesign is standardized to help manufacturers, and harmonized standards EN 13429 to EN 13432 are published to provide a framework for industrial practices, as well as a regulatory control tool for public authorities. The Conseil National de l'Emballage (National Packaging Council) was set up in 1997 to share best practices and disseminate them as widely as possible. In 2001, the plastics industry created the Technical Committee for the Recyclability of Plastic Packaging (Cotrep), a tool for the industry to scientifically analyze the recyclability of household packaging on a consensual basis. Five years later, the paper and cardboard sector followed suit with the Comité d'évaluation de la recyclabilité des emballage papier/carton (Cerec). These committees inspired others, both in France and abroad.

At the same time, manufacturers are wondering which packaging materials to use: virgin, biobased, recycled? Biosourced plastics are a good example: avoiding fossil fuels in favor of plant photosynthesis seems to make good sense in terms of the fight against global warming. On the other hand, the crops used for chemicals generally require...