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La circular economy has emerged as an essential business philosophy in the search for a sustainable future. On this path to sustainability, packaging design (or “ecodesign”) plays a crucial role. In this article, from ReciVeci, we propose a reflection for consumers about packaging and packaging when choosing the products we buy in our daily lives.
What do you value most when buying your products?
An important starting point to begin to change our consumer habits, or at least begin to question them, is to ask ourselves why we buy the products we buy. What do we value in doing so? Price? Quality? Level of environmental responsibility?
From the perspective of the circular economy, we talk about the Ecodesign, a comprehensive approach when thinking about packaging and packaging products that goes far beyond producing beautiful or economic containers, but involves thinking, from its manufacture, about the route that this material will take in environmental terms until its end of cycle.
In that regard, at ReciVeci we are committed to working together with companies such as Tetra Pak, in whom we recognize their commitment to seek the production of low carbon packaging, to invest in processes that prioritize the renewability of the material, since 70% of the packaging (on average) is composed of cardboard from responsibly managed forests, and part of it, of polymers from sugar cane.
Tetra Pak's packaging management proposal is an example of how a company can generate added value by assuming environmental responsibility by investing in technology, research and policies that facilitate not only the closure of the material cycle, but also that the raw material comes from renewable and certified sources, reducing the need to extract virgin raw material and, consequently, its environmental impact.
Much of the responsibility lies with large companies. They are the ones who put the products on the market and, therefore, who have the responsibility to seek sustainable alternatives in view of the climate emergency we are going through. But on the other hand, there is also a responsibility on the part of citizens in the products we purchase, since in the end we have the possibility of demanding production models with our purchases (or lack of them). This is called responsible consumption.
Ecodesign: designing for a circular economy
The Ellen McArthur Foundation has dedicated a great deal of research to how to design to build a more sustainable world than we have. For the purposes of this blog, we rescue these valuable quotes below that you can see at This article.
“Everything around us has been designed by someone: the clothes we wear, the buildings we live in, even the way we get our food. (...) The reality is that most things today are still designed for the linear model. This means that almost everything must be redesigned in accordance with the principles of the circular economy.
When you design something, you make important decisions that influence how it's manufactured, how it's used, and what happens when it's no longer needed or desired. It's very difficult to go back and undo the effects of those decisions if they are later discovered to produce undesirable consequences.”
Source - Ellen McArthur Foundation, Design and circular economy - deep dive.
Ecodesign, from this perspective, what it advocates is to build production models that do not focus solely on satisfying user desires, but on how these designs can impact the environment in which they exist. It promotes the manufacture of products designed and strategically designed from the start to have a real cycle closure, without negatively affecting the environment.
Educating ourselves as consumers can change realities
Returning to responsibility (and power) that we have as consumers when buying products, when we make a purchase we don't just choose the concrete: we choose a model of society, of production, and finally a model of life. Even if we are not aware of it on a daily basis, decisions are not naive.
For this reason, at ReciVeci, we invite you to become more involved in the production philosophy proposed by the circular economy, and to question whether the product in your hands is building the planet you want for your present and future.
