Packaging "Slimming Standards" Must Not Become Useless Window Dressing

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine and the Standardization Administration of China recently issued the national standard Requirements for Limiting Excessive Packaging of Commodities — Foods and Cosmetics, which officially took effect on 1 April 2010. The standard can be summed up in three numbers: the packaging void ratio of a commodity must not exceed 60%; packaging must not exceed three layers; and packaging costs must not exceed 20% of the commodity's selling price. However, the author has seen online that this standard has drawn doubts and even opposition from some enterprises and industry associations. Critics argue that packaging design embodies art, that a one-size-fits-all numerical quantification is dull, and that, since commodities differ in shape, value and packaging requirements, it is very difficult to constrain them with three numbers.

It is quite normal for enterprises to hold differing views on the new national standard; as a "slimming standard" intended to limit excessive packaging, it must be quantified in numbers. Without mandatory numerical provisions and with only general, principled clauses, how could excessive packaging be defined and penalised? The standard would then lose its core content and value and would inevitably become an attractive but useless "vase".

On closer analysis, the core of the three numbers is to simplify packaging, save resources and cut costs, and it should be said that they are fully capable of protecting product quality and transport safety. The two requirements — that the packaging void ratio not exceed 60% and that packaging not exceed three layers — are intended to limit packaging volume, since excessive volume both wastes materials and takes up space on transport vehicles and in stores, driving up transport charges and packaging costs and increasing the burden on consumers. The cap of 20% on packaging costs, meanwhile, restricts manufacturers from packaging goods in materials such as wood and metal.

In the author's view, quantifying and constraining packaging with numbers serves two purposes. The first is to practise strict economy. According to statistics, China throws away 280 billion yuan worth of packaging waste every year, wasting resources and polluting the environment, and disposing of packaging rubbish also costs a great deal of money. The second is to ease the cost burden on consumers when buying goods. Numerical provisions are also common practice: France's Packaging Law, for instance, sets limits on the packaging void ratio and packaging costs of commodities and bans wooden packaging for foods and cosmetics, making it stricter than China.

As everyone knows, what people seek when buying goods is use value, followed by good quality at a low price. In today's era of acute resource scarcity, the state must also consider the intensive production and packaging of goods and strive to save resources to the greatest possible extent. Packaging art is a secondary choice, one built on the foundation of good quality at a low price and resource conservation; to pursue so-called packaging art at the expense of wasting resources and raising costs is to put the cart before the horse and should be abandoned.

Numerical assessment can be called an energy-saving, environmentally friendly "packaging revolution". Although it will bring certain difficulties for manufacturers and retailers, manufacturers must adapt to it, reforming their packaging concepts, packaging technology and packaging processes; making rich profits from excessive packaging is now a dead end.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn), original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-362289.html