Packaging: Processes and Problems

Packaging waste

Packaging protects and present goods. Disposal of packaging materials into landfill sites is considered bad practice and can breach regulations and laws, leading to fines and prosecutions. Warehouses handle and generate high volumes of packaging materials. These can be natural materials, such as paper, cardboard, wood shavings, wood chips, string, pallet wood, and saw dust. They can be artificial materials too, such as polystyrene blocks and chips, plastic filler, bubble wrapping, adhesive tape, polyurethane sheets, polythene bags, nylon cording, and plastic boxes. Artificial materials are usually more easily reused than natural materials, but their cheapness, storage space requirements, and vulnerability to stretching or damaging means they are often disposed of. More than natural materials (which are often a fire hazard as well as vulnerable to damp), artificial packaging waste is environmentally destructive. The more packaging materials sent to landfill, the greater the negative environmental impact.

Companies that generate packaging waste are regulated by the Environment Agency, who penalize companies that fail to limit the volume of their packaging materials and reduce the volume of packaging waste sent to landfill. The Environment Agency encourages companies that generate packaging waste to increase the volume of recycled and recovered packaging waste and materials.

If a warehouse’s annual packaging waste exceeds a specified tonnage, its managers are obliged to achieve a corresponding recycling target. For example: the minimum weight of recycled packaging may be set at the same weight as the annual weight of the packaging waste generated. Fines or prosecutions can result if the targets are not met or guidelines are breached.

Warehouses can apply the Three Rs – “reduce”, “reuse”, and “recycle” – to their packaging waste. They can train operative on the types of materials that can be reduced, reused, or recycled. Adherence to the Three Rs should reduce the volume of material sent to landfill and thereby reduce the carbon footprint/sustainability/eco-friendliness of the warehouse and the company.

Managers may revise packaging procedures in order to further reduce waste/increase reuse or reduction. Smaller cartons for smaller goods may be bought so that cardboard usage can be reduced; pallets can be recycled/reused in order to avoid replacement with new.