The future of packaging is circular and can only be achieved through reusable solutions. In a world with finite resources, products and their manufacturers must adapt and adopt sustainable solutions that benefit consumers and the planet. For this, packaging offers tremendous opportunities to move from a linear economy to a circular economy. For us to achieve a circular economy in the long term, we still need to understand how today’s linear economy model is structured. Today, most products and packaging are designed to be used once and then thrown away. Which in turn leads to enormous amounts of material waste and pollution. With landfills reaching their capacity limits over the past decades and microplastics polluting the most remote regions of the world, change is urgently needed.
Here, reusable packaging is one of the most sustainable solutions for mail order. The circular economy is about reusing products and materials over and over again in a continuous cycle, rather than throwing them away.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation was established in 2010 to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. In a circular economy, products are reused. Products that cannot be reused are recycled through chemical or mechanical processes, or through biological processes such as composting. Circular packaging solutions incorporate the principles of the circular economy and fit seamlessly into sustainability efforts.