Environmental Packaging Future

Image: NASA

In a future where we drive around in alternative fuel cars and generate all our electricity from renewable sources we need to make everything in our lives more energy efficient. So making, transporting, and disposing of unnecessary packaging needs to be reconsidered. Many products now come to the UK from abroad and so this packaging travels even further across the world.

There is an industry which has been minimising packaging for years, the space industry. NASA have been sending astronauts into space using the minimum weight possible. At lot of their food comes in very little packaging. Liquids come in pouches as shown in this NASA picture.
This pouch takes up very little space and weight compared to the normal packaging that we're used to, and it allows astronauts to drink in space through the in built straw.

Original Source create shower gels from natural ingredients. As an environmentally conscious company they have created packaging, similar to the liquid pouch above, for their shower gel. They claim it's made with 75% less plastic. It's an innovation that paves to way forward and will make a huge difference to the environmental cost of transportation. It also takes less natural resources to make and with oil prices increasing and oil potentially running out, minimising this has to be a good thing.

There are many companies trying to reduce their carbon footprint in this way, from beer bottles made with less glass to supermarket lorries with a more aerodynamic shape. It will be very in common in the next few years to see companies move away from spending money on token windmills and move to spending money on alternative fuel lorries, more efficient packaging and of course advertising their green image! Most supermarkets already offer degradable carrier bags and a range of renewable bags. It's a future where maybe a simple jar of Marmite doesn't have to be presented in a box, just because it's extra old!