Cardboard vs. Other Packaging Materials. Which One Is More Eco-Friendly?

At My Box Printing, we take things seriously when it comes to preserving the nature of our planet. We have taken numerous initiatives to manufacture eco-friendly bakery products packaging. That’s why we prefer to use cardboard over other materials as it has higher levels of being friendly to our ecological system.

What Does Eco-Friendly Mean?

Environmentally friendly or environment-friendly, (also referred to as eco-friendly, nature-friendly, and green) are marketing and sustainability terms referring to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies that inflict reduced, minimal, or no harm upon ecosystems or the environment. Companies use these ambiguous terms to promote goods and services, sometimes with additional, more specific certifications, such as eco-labels. Their overuse can be referred to as green-washing.

To get more information about the definition of eco-friendly, read this article on wikipedia.

So cardboard is more friendly to our environment?

Before we jump to conclusion, we first have to look on other popular material used in bakery items packaging boxes.

1). Plastic

Plastic is the packaging material that is most common but the most difficult to dispose of . The features common to all packaging boxes made with plastics are that they are light, strong and cheap to manufacture. These are the reasons that they are used so much, as an substitute to cardboard packaging materials. Plastics are a problem in landfills as they are bulky, and their contamination degrade much slowly.

2). Metal

Appropriate for canned foods and drinks, aluminium is often used in packaging boxes.Since these packaging boxes can be separated by magnets, they can be recycled in all cases. But aluminium being appealing and light but strong at the same time, it requires a lot of raw materials energy to make it.

3). Brick carton

Brick caron is a light, strong and air-tight packaging material. Mainly used to keep drinks such as milk and juices, it is ideal for easy transportation and storage. But it’s complex structure makes it more difficult to recycle.

4). Cardboard

And now our favourite packaging material, cardboard. Being the ridiculously eco-friendly material out there, cardboard is made of 95% post-consumer waste and 5% post-industrial waste. Avoiding the use of new paper fibers and saving a lot of trees in the process. 

But there are some situations where cardboard is avoided to recycle. You can find more information on this subject in our article published here.

But still cardboard tops the charts when it comes to choosing a material that consumes less energy to manufacture and easily recycled without using the new raw material. Be sure to check out our biodegradable, eco-friendly cardboard bakery packaging boxes.

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