Google released its anticipated plastic-free packaging design guide this week focused on consumer electronics products. It’s an open resource which the company says it hopes will accelerate sustainability efforts across industries.
This follows Google’s October 2020 commitment to eliminate plastic from consumer electronics packaging by 2025. In 2022 it was 96% of the way there in consumer hardware products, according to Google’s 2023 Environmental Report.
Plastic’s role in complex packaging creates “a high volume of mixed material waste that is difficult to recycle,” the guide notes. “Through extensive material exploration, design optimization, and rigorous testing, we've identified viable alternatives to plastic that address key packaging elements.”
Google wrote out five packaging principles that guided its process:
- Prioritizes recyclability: Materials must be widely compatible with existing and future recycling streams.
- Minimizes waste: Optimized packaging size and weight minimizes the overall material footprint.
- Maximizes accessibility: Designed with everyone in mind, features like holes, lifts and tabs promote intuitive component removal.
- Protects products: Sustainable packaging cannot compromise a product's integrity. Replacing damaged products carries a significant environmental impact.
- Embraces innovations: Creating new solutions demands constant exploration and collaboration.
The guide is heavy on fiber alternatives to plastic components, such as molded fiber, greyboard and corrugated paper. The guide shares how Google cut plastic from packaging components in the form of molded fiber trays and hang tabs, paper tapes, shrink wrap removal and more.
A material library details suppliers and material grades. It also breaks down material makeup for certain molded fibers, which include bamboo pulp and bagasse pulp.
“It’s normal for companies to adopt best practices from others over time, but where sustainability is concerned, the speed of that adoption matters,” Google Consumer Hardware’s David Bourne, sustainability strategy lead, and Miguel Arevalo, packaging innovation lead, wrote in a blog post. “To accelerate progress in sustainability, we want to share more than simply what we’ve achieved, but also how we’ve achieved it to enable others in their sustainability journey.”
Elsewhere in consumer electronics, Apple announced last fall that it was on track to phase out plastic in primary and secondary packaging by 2025. It rolled out fiber-based packaging designs, starting with the Apple Watch Series 9 lineup. And Amazon set a goal in 2020 to make all packaging for its devices recyclable by 2023; of the packaging for its 2022 product launches, about 80% had 100% recyclable packaging.
