Since the start of the Pandemic in Germany in March 2020, much of the world has been in on-and-off lockdown. That’s over a year. That means we have been cooking a lot at home, ordering products online, and just generally stocking up on ‘things’.

This has made me really notice how much trash I produce every week.

Germany, where I live, is strict when it comes to trash sorting. There is a whole line of different trash cans in front of my house: organic trash, plastics, paper and cardboard, everything else.

During the Pandemic, I’ve noticed a lot more plastic trash, and that motivated me to learn more about packaging waste and potential solutions.

While we cannot avoid packaging altogether, we can choose options that reduce the environmental and human health impacts and, in turn, make packaging more sustainable.

But what exactly is sustainable packaging?

During my research, I quickly came across the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a membership-based collaborative with nearly 700 members, including industry leaders such as UPS, Nestlé, Unilever, Starbucks, and Amazon.

Per the SPC, sustainable packaging:

• Is beneficial, safe, and healthy for individuals and communities throughout its life cycle
• Meets market criteria for both performance and cost
• Is sourced, manufactured, transported, and recycled using renewable energy
• Optimizes the use of renewable or recycled source materials
• Is manufactured using clean production technologies and best practices
• Is made from materials that are healthy throughout the life cycle
• Is physically designed to optimize materials and energy
• Is effectively recovered and utilized in biological and/or industrial closed-loop cycles

A full version of the definition, along with explanations, can be found on the SPC website (PDF download). The SPC is a project of GreenBlue, whose website contains plenty of insight into related topics, like recycling and green formulation.

On Goldn, the formula-based Product Creation platform, creators will be able to find packaging suppliers who care as much as they do about sustainability. End-to-end collaboration with companies that share your values is one of the things we will enable, as part of our mission to revolutionize cosmetics creation.

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