Pack up your troubles - Printwear & Promotion – garment decoration and promotional clothing/merchandise news & information

Pack up your troubles

Epona's Juliet Bacon looks at the issue of packaging and asks whether there is anything the printwear industry could and should be doing to minimise its use

Published: 28 February, 2008

In January 2008, the state council of China announced it was banning free plastic bags in its latest attempt to conserve resources and ease environmental pressures. Up to 3 billion plastic bags are used each day in China. This staggering figure is symptomatic of wider problems in China, as the government struggles to raise awareness of the environmental costs of breakneck economic growth. Even in the UK we use billions of plastic bags every year, which are more often than not treated as entirely disposable items.

The ban on bags brings China in line with a growing international trend. Although we don't seem much closer to a full ban in the UK, the increase in eco bags, epitomised by Anya Hindmarch's ‘I'm not a plastic bag', has led to almost every high street store and supermarket chain launching their own version of an environmentally friendly ‘bag for life'. This trend is also having an impact on the promotional industry as re-usable bags are fast becoming a popular alternative to the plastic promotional bag.

But it's not just plastic bags that are responsible for the 1,678,900 tonnes of plastic that enters the UK waste stream each year, a figure that is increasing dramatically year on year.1 Plastic packaging is also a huge problem. To give an indication of how big the problem can get, look again at China. Dong Suocheng, of the China Institute of Resources, said two-thirds of China's cities are surrounded by mounds of plastic waste, only a fraction of which is buried. Each person produces an average of 264kg of rubbish every year, totalling nearly 1m tonnes a day.2 With the urban population set to double by the end of 2020, that volume is rising at a terrifying rate. In the UK, 5 million tonnes (one fifth of annual household rubbish), is packaging. Asda has launched a pilot scheme at two of its stores asking customers to return excess packaging in an attempt to put pressure on big name brands to reduce product waste. Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw goes one step further and calls for shoppers to leave ‘excessive and unnecessary' packaging behind at stores.

But what impact does excess packaging have on the promotional market? Many manufacturers who supply garments to the industry are using a wasteful amount of packaging for their products. It is the norm for every garment produced to be individually wrapped in a plastic bag, grouped into a larger bag, boxed (and then packed into a carton) before it is shipped to the UK. Most of these products are sold to garment decorators who take the garment out of all this packaging in order to print or embroider it.

One decorator, Gary Law from Blue Room Promotions, questions the logic of this. He says all the garments he buys need to be unwrapped before they are printed or embroidered and the pile of polythene packaging ends up in a landfill or at best, is recycled. He says: "I am guessing that people like myself who embroider and print, rarely repackage the garments with the original packaging. If the customer requests individual packaging we use new bags, but around 90% of the time this is not required and the garments are just individually folded and then group packed into a box." He asks whether it is really necessary for manufacturers who supply this market to use such a large amount of packaging and whether the saving would not only decrease waste plastic, but also result in a cheaper product?

The Government has noted the problem of waste packaging and the responsibility the manufactuer has to reduce or recover the plastic they use. In 1997, the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations came into place, which require certain businesses to meet targets for the recovery and recycling of packaging waste.3 If a manufacturer is supplying the end user, there is an argument that individually wrapped packaging is necessary for in store sales.

But in the promotional market, where the end user is very rarely the customer, minimising the amount of plastic wrapping it entirely plausible, especially as garments are usually purchased in bulk. Epona made this change several years ago and moved from individual packaging to group bagging 10 items at a time. When are garments are decorated, we encourage printers not to repackage each top, but instead fold and box them up in reused Epona boxes, with a plastic sheet covering all the stock to prevent any possible water damage.

When plastic packaging is used, either by manufactures or decorators, there are a number of environmentally friendly options available. Bioplastics are a new generation of biodegradable and compostable plastics, derived from renewable raw materials such as starch (corn, potato, tapioca). They are not hazardous in production and decompose back to carbon dioxide, water and biomass.

Corn starch is currently the main raw material being used and is certified for compostability under standards set by international organisations. It is also useful to note the difference between biodegradable and compostable, as these terms are often used interchangeably. Compostable plastics biodegrade and disintegrate within a set period of time, without producing any toxic material and this compost can then support plant life. Biodegradable plastics degrade through naturally occurring micro organisms, such as bacteria, but there is no requirement for leaving "no toxic residue".4

Hopefully, with rising awareness and pressure from buyers, consumers and the Government, manufacturers will start to reduce the amount of plastic packaging they use, switch to more ecofriendly plastics where possible and decrease the amount of waste packaging produced.

1. 2001 stat DEFRA

2. According to official figures, The Guardian

3. DEFRA website

4. www.worldcentric.org/store/bioplastics.htm