Packaging: How We Got Here, And How We Can Get Out Of It

Packaging is one of the quiet success stories of modern life. It keeps food fresh, medicines safe, and products intact as they move around the world. Plastics in particular have been a genuine innovation: lightweight, durable and cheap to produce. Plastic packaging has a smaller carbon footprint than heavier glass or metal, and it prevents far more emissions by cutting food waste than it creates in production. But the very qualities that make packaging so effective – resilience, low cost, disposability – have also created problems. I’m a big believer in the maxim “there is no such thing as bad materials, just bad systems” and we have bad systems.

Today packaging represents around 40% of global plastic demand (OECD, 2022). Plastic waste generation more than doubled from 2000 to 2019, reaching 353 million tonnes. Our systems haven’t been able to keep-up.

The picture is complicated. On the one hand, packaging reduces food waste (which itself carries a huge carbon cost), ensures medicines and vaccines arrive safely and makes global trade possible. On the other, excessive or poorly designed packaging contributes to environmental impact, litter and rising public frustration (this last point is worth consideration in an article of its own; packaging is a diversion from the most serious and urgent threat of climate change and the resulting collapse of biodiversity). And it’s not just plastic that’s the problem. Poor packaging design across the board creates significant problems for the planet. 

So how did we get here? Convenience is the short answer. After the Second World War, consumers and companies embraced disposability as a sign of progress as well as an economic necessity to kick-start economies. Single-use packaging replaced refillable, and the new supermarkets flourished thanks to bulk purchasing and cheap packaging that extended product life. Don’t get me wrong, initially recycling was able to keep-up with consumption, but it hasn’t been able to keep pace with the sheer scale of consumption and therefore packaging use (there’s the core of the problem, the amount of products and food we consume). The challenge now is not to demonise packaging, but to ask where it is genuinely valuable, where it is excessive and how to make the useful stuff easier to recover and reuse. 

Innovative Solutions: Packaging, Reinvented 
The good news: innovation is everywhere. Engineers, designers and entrepreneurs are rethinking packaging so it can do its job without leaving a century-long legacy. Sometimes the answer is better pack design, sometimes it’s entirely new materials, and sometimes it’s re-designing the system so packaging barely appears in the first place. Here are some of the most interesting ideas gaining traction at the moment:

1) Mushrooms: Magical Mushroom Company (MMC)
MMC combines agricultural waste with mycelium (the root network of mushrooms and the real world wide web that allows trees to talk to each other – yes really) to grow protective packaging that can replace expanded polystyrene foam. It biodegrades in about 45 days yet is strong enough to ship cosmetics or electronics. Clients like Lush and Selfridges already use it, showing fungi can take on heavy-duty jobs without leaving baggage behind.
magicalmushroom.com

2) Seaweed: Notpla
London startup Notpla turns seaweed and plants into films, sachets and food boxes. Their edible water bubbles were tested at the London Marathon, and over a million seaweed-coated takeaway boxes have been used by Just Eat. Seaweed grows fast, captures carbon and doesn’t compete with farmland. No surprise they won the Earthshot Prize in 2022.
notpla.com

3) Seaweed: Kelpi
(Seaweed again – I’ll be honest, it’s one of the things that gives me the most hope). Bath-based Kelpi uses seaweed-derived biopolymers as ultra-thin coatings for paper and card. The result is packaging that resists water and oil but can compost at home or break down harmlessly if littered. Unlike some bioplastics, it doesn’t require industrial composters (I’ve had a Co-op “compostable” bag in my compost heap that’s been there for years, there’s a video about it on my Youtube channel). That flexibility has already attracted interest from numerous retailers and cosmetics brands.
kelpi.net

4) Shellworks: From Shellfish to Microbes
Originally inspired by lobster shells, Shellworks now produces Vivomer™, a biopolymer made by feeding plant waste to bacteria. It looks and feels like plastic, but it (allegedly) breaks down in a backyard compost heap within a year. Luxury brands are trialling it for packaging perfumes and creams – a market that demands performance and beauty alongside sustainability.
shellworks.com

5) MarinaTex: Fish Waste to Film
Invented by design student Lucy Hughes, MarinaTex is a translucent film made from fish waste and red algae. Waste from one cod can produce around 1,400 bags. It composts in 4-6 weeks and won the James Dyson Award in 2019. Still at prototype stage, but a smart example of turning two waste streams into one solution.
marinatex.co.uk

6) Woola: Bubble Wrap from Sheep’s Wool
Millions of tonnes of coarse sheep’s wool are discarded each year because it’s unsuitable for textiles and the market for wool carpets has collapsed. Estonian company Woola turns it into padded mailers and bubble-wrap alternatives. It’s biodegradable and naturally water-resistant.
woola.io/bubblewool

These aren’t silver bullets. Scaling-up takes time, investment and a fair amount of consumer acceptance. But they demonstrate the breadth of ideas on the table – from reimagining plastic itself to leaning on nature’s waste streams for answers. 

What You Can Do
Most of us can’t brew up a batch of seaweed polymer in the kitchen, but we can still shape the system through the choices we make. Here are a few actions that matter -

Cut the excess: Choose unpackaged produce where practical (and where shelf-life isn’t adversely affected), avoid double-wrapped goods, and buy direct from the producer/farmer to reduce the packaging at source (it’s also cheaper).

Reuse, refill, repeat: Bring your own bottle, cup or lunchbox. Try refill shops or brands offering concentrates and refills. Concentrate refills are particularly effective.

Switch your shower gel for soap: Why would you transport all that water around in the first place and soap is minimally (if at all) packaged (you can find a lovely KLEEN bar in BRiMM's Plastic-Free Bathroom Reset Box).

Recycle properly: Rinse it, sort it and check your local rules. Wish-cycling (throwing it in the bin and hoping) only gums up the system. In our attempts to recycle everything we contaminate whole loads of materials and create huge downstream problems. -

Compost where you can: Successive UK Governments have held-off introducing compulsory food waste composting collections. Planned for 2023, we will be lucky to see them before 2027. Once introduced, home-compostable packaging will have a chance of being composted (ironically) as it will be sent for industrial composting (I can finally say goodbye to that Co-op home compostable bag). 

Support the innovators: Reward brands that use smarter packaging – whether that’s mushroom boxes, recycled plastics or refill schemes.

Speak up: Let companies know when packaging frustrates you, and support policies like deposit-return schemes or improved recycling standards. As I, and many others have said, there’s no such thing as bad materials, only bad systems. The challenge is to use each material where it genuinely makes sense, and design out waste where it doesn’t.

Packaging has always been a balancing act: protection versus waste, convenience versus impact. The task now is to cut the unnecessary stuff, make the essential bits smarter, and open the door to a wider range of materials. With mushrooms, seaweed, sheep, and even microbes in the mix, the story of packaging is far from over.

Now check out our Plastic-Free Bathroom Reset Box, read Mark’s piece on How a New Food System Could Heal Us and The Planet – and sign-up to our free newsletter to see more content like this first

Mark Shayler is an environmental expert, advisor and author. He has worked in sustainability for 35 years saving his clients over £160 million by doing things better and doing better things. markshayler.com.