What does REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE really mean – it does NOT mean to make the pack as thin as possible-Henning Weigand

 

Clearly, the most sustainable Packaging is NO Packaging, at all, and the guiding principles of REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE are a broad consensus across the Packaging community. REDUCE is not to be misinterpreted as making the Pack as low in weight as possible, because this usually means, that it is designed for single use (e.g. a paper coffee cup or thin plastic bag), which causes significant follow-on challenges such as micro-plastics. Reduce needs to be interpreted solely as: Avoid using a Pack whenever possible. The best we can do in the Packaging community is make ourselves obsolete. The move towards convenience food and eCommerce home delivery does not help in this, single use packaging has increased significantly through recent years, which is not a great development for Sustainable Packaging. It actually is the root cause of why Packaging has become a major problem.

My personal favorite is the REUSE model, which to me is the true circularity. But for this, Packs must be designed for Reuse; e.g. might need to be made heavier – which could be interpreted as the opposite of Reduce. This however requires a well embedded circular end to end return supply chain. Usually with each circle a Pack makes in a circular chain, it loses some of its properties, such as stability, cleanliness, marketability. After a certain number of rounds it therefore cannot be Reused anymore.

Only in this case, the RECYCLE part steps in, which requires the material to be e.g. mechanically shredded (paper, plastics) with usually higher CO² input. Especially for small consumer packs, in the meantime many European countries have implemented taxes and mandated recycling rates to give used plastics, paper etc. a value and trigger a circular chain. This is the right way, to me though, the Reuse model still takes priority over Recycling: Imagine you drink one coffee every day per year: This would result in 365 use-and-throw paper coffee cups versus one thicker coffee mug e.g. made of thicker HDPE plastics or ceramics, it’s quite simple to visualize which one is more sustainable.

To summarize: The guiding principles in the Packaging community Reduce Reuse Recycle are key to sustainability, they should not be interpreted the wrong way though, to avoid a linear economy and move towards true circularity instead. Henning Weigand