Fast – moving consumer goods are packaged products sold to consumers for their daily needs, which is quick consumed and priced at low value. For this reason, they are known as the products with short life span, high turnover and, as a result, high volume of packaging scraps. Plastics is the main packaging material in FMCGs, which raises up the waves of backlash from consumers for the problems related to packaging wastage. The race for sustainable packaging is vital to FMCG companies for both their brands’ images or marketability and our environment.
Many researches toward green material for sustainable packaging have been made by FMCG companies. One of significant innovations is Bio-Plastics which is HDPE obtained from renewable sources with less fossil fuel used. However, this kind of bio-plastics is still non-biodegradable and it still remains the matter of waste management and recycling.
In fact, the recyclability for plastics is inconsistent to the volume of plastics dumping. According to the statistics from McKinsey & Company, in Europe, only about 40% of plastics are recycled while recycled rate for paper-based products is 80%. For that reason, FMCGs have tried to replace the plastic packaging by a more sustainable packaging as paper-based one. Other innovations in paper packaging have been made to replace the plastics such as paper- packaging with aluminium coating for liquid or Botta Packaging’s eco-envelope to replace the bubble wrapping for fragile goods.
FMCG’s actions toward sustainable packaging
Actual actions have been made by FMCG company toward the sustainable packaging. Also, according to McKinsey & Company, the top 100 FMCG companies have made public declarations for their decisive commitment to solve the problem of packaging wastage. Among them, 60 companies emphasize on spreading the recycled message to consumer and focus on the matter of rubbish treatment. In the meanwhile, 26 of them act on reducing the total packaging for their products by minimizing the packaging layers and packaging weight or eliminating completely the packaging for their products.
Only 14 companies in the top 100 opt to invest in the innovations and systematic changes. These systematic changes include the effort to change the consumer’s habit toward sustainability, such as refilling system in supermarket to encourage consumers using their own package, or the selection of suppliers or partners who followed the sustainable practice.
To summarize, the public attention to sustainable packaging solution from FMCG companies is reasonable due to the fact that these products create high and frequent volume of rubbish from their short-life products. For this reason, FMCG companies are under great social pressure to innovate and change for a sustainable packaging to enhance the consumer’s experience in the new eco-friendly era.
