As Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies become more mainstream and more aspirational, businesses across a wide range of industries are seeking new ways of packaging and despatching goods and products to meet the necessary criteria.

Many are choosing more sustainable and recyclable packaging materials to distribute goods through the supply chain, to retail outlets or customers, and to end user consumers. In addition, this type of packaging, such as corrugated, supports the circular economy perfectly.

What businesses need to consider

When seeking new packaging businesses should first consider a few simple questions:

• Which elements of their packaging supply do they need to upgrade or replace?
• Do they fully understand which parts could be replaced with sustainable or recyclable materials?
• Is it time to speak with packaging professionals experienced in this field?

Understanding the capabilities of corrugated can be quite hard to understand for those not familiar with the material.

Often, it is thought of as a material for outer transit boxes only. Yet, it’s full range of capabilities is quite staggering and can be under appreciated.

How can corrugated work for my business?

Corrugated can work in so many ways, replacing hard to recycle materials with ease. Our skilled design team understand the wide range of board grades and fluting available to create designs that offer protection, strength, creativity, brand awareness, product display items and more.

Three examples from many of how corrugated has replaced hard to recycle materials include:

• The replacement of a wooden pallet with corrugated, including an integral pallet pack for easy global shipping.
• Removing single use plastic void fill by creating bespoke internal fittings that also helped to reduce movement of product within the outer pack and reduced product damage and subsequent returns.
• Eradicating the use of single use plastic bags to ship online fashion purchases making recycling for the consumer easier and elevating brand reputation.

Sharon Garner, Director, Red Rose Packaging commented; “We understand there are so many elements to running a business, and sometimes business decision makers need to call on third party experts to advise and guide where necessary to achieve the best possible outcomes.

“By consulting with our team, to reduce the use of single use or hard to recycle packaging materials, or to simply minimise waste, we can analyse, assess, and advise on all elements of current packaging usage and offer corrugated and paper-based alternatives where appropriate. This is a process that we undertake on a regular basis with great success – simply get in touch with our team to begin the process.”