Talking about "Green Packaging"

Abstract : Packaging design as a specific design activity, a design that has a wide influence on human life style, if it fully and accurately realizes its potential, it can reduce or mitigate the drawbacks that have already emerged; on the contrary, it will exacerbate these contradiction. Faced with these real problems, packaging designers and manufacturers are shouldering irresistible social responsibilities.

Keywords: value orientation ecological environment green packaging long way to go

Packaging design is the design of the appearance of the finished product container and its packaging. The purpose is to obtain a reliable, beautiful and creative human thing that meets the needs of people. In order for a product to have a shell that matches its content when it is shipped and sold, packaging is required to have both good technical design to protect and characterize the complete quality of the product and good visual design to ensure the smooth sale of the product. The packaging can be divided into industrial packaging and commercial packaging. The industrial packaging design focuses on protection. The commercial packaging design aims at promotion. In the commercial competition, excellent packaging design can increase the added value of goods, stimulate consumers' desire for purchase, and have obvious promotion effect. Its ultimate goal is to influence the concept and behavior of consumers, establish commodity brands, and win marketing strategies.

With the advent of the new century, the various crises lurking in human society have emerged in different forms, leading to increasingly intensified social contradictions. To sum up, the Earth's ecological system, which concerns the basic living conditions of human beings, is gradually losing its balance. As far as the public’s daily life is concerned, the honesty relationship between production and consumption in the commercial society in which we live has relaxed. A large number of shoddy and inferior commodities have been swept through the market and circulated in the distribution channels by virtue of relatively low prices. They have met the low-level consumer desires of some consumers, but in the long-term sense It weakens or even destroys the real prospects of economic prosperity, and hinders the quality of our lives from advancing to a higher level: packaging design is a specific design activity, a design that has a wide influence on the way of life of human beings. Correctly exerting its potential can reduce or alleviate the drawbacks that have already emerged; on the contrary, it will exacerbate these conflicts. Faced with these real problems, packaging designers and manufacturers are shouldering irresistible social responsibilities.

The packaging is a one-time consumer product. At the same time as the packaging industry is developing, it not only consumes a lot of resources, but also seriously pollutes and destroys the ecological environment. It has gradually attracted the attention of the world public and the environmental protection community. In order to solve the pollution problem in the packaging industry, some new environmental protection materials and new technologies have emerged one after another, and green packaging has gradually become the people's choice. Chong has no pollution, pollution-free "green packaging", as the "green packaging" practitioners, this is not only the survival and development needs of the packaging industry, but also the trend and direction of the development of packaging design in the new century.

The concept of green packaging began in the mid-1970s. With the increase of awareness of the environment and ecology protection of the whole society, the design institution has taken ecological protection into the new round of design thinking process from the consideration of the immediate interests and sustainable development of human beings. The earliest green design was developed by a company that produces detergents in the UK. In the product design, environmental protection concepts such as “natural recyclable raw materials, recyclable packaging” were adopted: easy to clean, durable, and refillable The packaging design effectively solves the malicious consumption of disposable packaging products for its packaging resources, and therefore, it also reduces the pollution to the environment to some extent. Once the product was launched, it immediately attracted the attention of consumers in the market and they enthusiastically accepted the new concept of environmental protection.

While consumers are actively welcoming environmental products, the social responsibility of packaging designers has also been stimulated. Designers assume the role of coordination and cooperation between consumers and manufacturers. They advocated the “Green Consumption Guidelines”, made the community understand and support green design, and guided “green capitalists” to make profits in the protection of the environment. By the 1990s, companies in Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark invested more in green design. The voice of “Re Use Re Fill” has gradually been responded to all over the world. Many large-scale enterprises have updated their production methods with the development of the times, and have raised the awareness of environmental protection in product design to a strategic position.

In order to ensure that nature maintains its normal operations from man-made damage, in addition to using reusable packaging, packaging designers began to conceive of revolutionary improvements in package design using purely natural materials, enabling them to integrate into the ecosystem. In the cycle. Like the metabolism of the living system, nature's ecosystem is also constantly undergoing a cycle of matter and energy. Once this cycle is out of balance and even destroyed, the ecosystem that provides the material basis for our lives will also lose itself. Balanced or even collapsed, then the life on earth will not be far away from the ash. Therefore, this is not just an aesthetic issue, but a fundamental issue of survival. So designers conceived that if man-made packaging can be incorporated into the cycle of a large ecosystem, its material can be taken in nature in a systematically accepted way and returned to nature, so that it can be reused or The opportunity to regenerate, instead of forcing it to nature, throws it back to nature in the form of rubbish, and ends up in a tragedy that destroys the quality of our lives. If we can make packaging really beautify our lives in this way Growing up with the development of life is not only a blessing for the design business but also a blessing for humanity. Therefore, in terms of packaging, this concept of growth and the concept of affinity with the environment have become the conscious mission of designers and have become the focus of their consideration in packaging design.

With the impact of the world's green wave, materials on plastics degradation are also being researched and developed. Degradable materials are materials worthy of further research and development. After the materials are used, they are used in the light and the role of microorganisms in soil and water. Under the natural environment, it gradually decomposes and restores, and eventually re-enters the ecological environment in a non-toxic form, returning to nature. For example, a French dairy company made a yoghurt extracted from sugar beet, made into a yogurt box and a cup plate. The basic raw material of this ecological box is beetroot, which becomes a light, strong material through the incorporation of minerals. Boxes made of this material can be decomposed into farmyard fertilizers under 55 degrees Celsius and 60 days. For another example, paper materials are widely used in the packaging industry. The raw materials of paper are mainly natural plant fibers, which are quickly decomposed in nature, causing low levels of environmental pollution and can be recycled. Today, many international companies use recycled paper for the production of annual reports and promotional materials. Letter paper and letter paper are made from recycled paper to reflect its green focus on the environment and establish a good corporate image.

To sum up, solving the problem of green packaging from the development of packaging materials is an important way, and it is also one of the factors that guarantee the sustainable development of this field. In addition, the accurate and reasonable selection of materials in the packaging design process, combined with the improved creativity, can also play a decisive role in the development of green packaging.

In the packaging design, in addition to the selection of materials that can be easily degraded and returned to nature, saving materials is one of the main contents of the green packaging. If a package overemphasizes its structure, layers of packaging paper and packaging are intended to enhance the high-grade packaging of goods. Despite the exquisite decoration techniques and high design quality, waste materials are not worth promoting. If the design of the packaging clever and vivid, beautifully produced, enhance its collection value, and create its opportunities for repeated use, this is a trend worthy of promotion. In addition, in the design language, more emphasis should be placed on information related to the promotion of environmental protection, and the atmosphere of green packaging should be exposed between patterns, names, colors, and characters, so as to form a mainstream of design and spread. Design should consider the use of resources, environmental impact, and solutions in a comprehensive manner from the aspects of material selection, structure function, manufacturing process, packaging methods, storage and transportation methods, product use, and waste disposal. The principle of conservation is always applied throughout the design process. Energy consumption should be reduced as much as possible and disassembly facilitated so that materials and components can be recycled.

China is a country with relatively insufficient population resources. The development of "green packaging" is an inevitable choice for China's packaging industry, and it is the development trend of the packaging design industry in the future. Faced with this development trend, we should do the following: First, we must pay attention to the development and replacement of packaging materials. The international packaging industry has entered the era of developing environmentally friendly materials instead of traditional materials. China's packaging industry should also actively follow up and focus its work on the development and replacement of packaging materials. The second is to pay attention to the recycling and reuse of packaging waste, save energy and resources. The third is to actively adapt to the global green consumer fashion, promote and guide the development of commodity packaging towards the "green packaging", so that "green packaging" is supported by consumers and the whole society. Fourth, the government should take corresponding measures to encourage the use of renewable and recycled packaging products. The fifth is to improve the green packaging regulations and management system as well as the rules and regulations for the recycling and disposal of packaging waste as soon as possible so that the green packaging will go to the rule of law.

in conclusion

Although the concept of ecological protection has been vigorously promoted and widely known, the environmental protection awareness in packaging design has always depended on the continued joint efforts of designers, manufacturers, and the whole society. Green packaging design from the acquisition of materials to processing are completely different from the existing channels and production processes. In the initial stage, it will undoubtedly occupy more funds, increase the cost of products, and make enterprises face certain risks. However, from a long-term point of view, with the improvement of environmental awareness in the entire society and gradually becoming part of the public’s daily life and consumer behavior, green goods and their packaging will undoubtedly play a positive role in promoting the development of the company, because The life of the people lies in their engagement with the public's consumer behavior and desires. On the road to hope and success, environmental protection packaging design can be described as a long way to go.

Author: Liu Shanshan Source: Shandong Institute of Design