Packages and closures for packaging

When greenwashing starts to be a problem

For a few years now, environment protection has been an important part of our everyday life. On one hand, consumers want to be more eco, and, on the other hand, manufacturers want to show them that it’s choosing their products that will make them environmentally friendly.
Manufacturers declare that their product is a “better” choice, sometimes even without providing the information on what it's better from and why...
Companies try to meet market trends at various levels, some declare, others dye labels into “craft” colors, yet other ones modify ingredients of products or packaging. The various declarations and changes to the product offer which were supposed to save our planet adopted very interesting forms.
Bio additives to plastic which formed non-recyclable composites. Creating small products based on mono-materiality, which, in the context of the current design of sorting plants, aren’t recycled anyway. Limiting packaging weights to the point where its value to the recycler has dropped to zero. Adding regranulate to products in which it shouldn’t be present (at a time when there was no corresponding regulation on the use of regranulate in food and cosmetic packaging).
It’s not only plastic that is modified into a seemingly eco-friendly form, as other materials haven’t been unharmed in the struggle to be more eco either....
Producers started adding coffee residue or grass seeds to paper (some could be put into the ground and you could expect fresh blades), which is lovely to look at, but much less practical for a paper processing plant that wants to recover the cleanest possible pulp from waste paper.
Paper was permanently combined with plastic in the form of transparent windows or varnish, thanks to which it gained practical utility functions, but lost the opportunity for a new lease of life as waste paper.
Glass permanently combined with wood or bamboo, creating mixed waste, looks like personification of a mountain stream on a shelf, and makes the dream of an eco-product come true.
There are multiple examples, and we could quote copywriters who rose to the heights of their  talentless abilities in extolling the modifications that would lead to being greener.
One may also not pass judgments, but refer to the information chaos that affected not only customers, but also manufacturers.
The recent years have been a genuine rollercoaster of environmentally friendly changes, scandals, innovations and becoming aware of increasingly new problems. If one genuinely wanted to change their habits and products, then the absence of reliable sources of eco knowledge led to attempts that turned out to be mistaken, then to subsequent ones that were even more shady, until regulations regulated certain activities. It has also led some to refrain from taking actions in connection with the feeling of being lost and, finally, lack of sense, as the steps taken are immediately torpedoed by consumers, environmentalists and the competition.
It's the legislator that has come to the rescue!
The regulations and directives that are starting to take effect in the European Union are sometimes controversial, introducing them into the operations of a company is sometimes inconvenient and requires work, time and money, but they do clear up doubts to a considerable extent.
Apart from the PPWR regulation, which basically every business should be familiar with, because packaging, even if it's for shipping goods ordered by a customer, affects everyone, the greenwashing ban has come into effect.
By far the main task of the PPWR regulation is to regulate the issue of packaging, its material composition, size, recyclability and the content of already-recycled plastic. It will be a perfect road map for everybody who markets packaging or elements thereof.

The greenwashing directive will sort out the area of declarations, advertisements and marketing messages, which have been dominated by green leaves, eco stickers and circular economy symbols.
"Natural," "environmentally neutral," "eco-friendly," "biodegradable" these and other slogans cannot be used unsubstantiated, and some of them even cannot be used at all.
Environmental neutrality has been claimed by tree-planting companies, which assume that the number of the trees planted (and their growth, and consequently bigger capacity) offsets the amount of CO2 emitted by a given company.  Performing such a trick, they called their products environmentally friendly, whereas the products themselves or their packaging will become waste whose final fate on the planet Earth is unknown.
The excessively lavish use of environmental slogans will have to be backed up with hard evidence. If a manufacturer says something about its product, that the new formulation has been improved and has become less harmful than its previous versions, evidence to support such a claim will be necessary.
Calling something green may go out of use for good, because on second thoughts nothing is green these days, every production generates pollution, if only by increased human labor, the amount of air consumed.
Is it, therefore, the end to information on environmentally friendly products? Healthy and simple ones when it comes to their ingredients?
On the contrary! It's a planned beginning of reliable information based on hard evidence. The European Union is handing over certificates to entrepreneurs which will be awarded according to strict standards, and which will prove that a product has been manufactured in the spirit of sustainable development, is organic or biodegradable.

The European Union requires member states to put these regulations in place and to control that they are properly enforced. Penalties for non-compliant businesses will be very severe, as they can amount to as much as 4% of the annual turnover, revenue generated from related transactions may be seized, and companies may be excluded from public procurement and financing for up to 12 months.
Consequently, the information provided about products’ environmental balance or a company in general should be well-balanced.

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