Analysis of the issue of excess packaging

With the reform of our country's economic system, consumers’ purchasing power is increasing, and packaging can bring economic added value to products. This significant role has been increasingly recognized and valued by merchants. However, due to the non-standard operation in packaging design, the issue of excess product packaging has become increasingly fiercer in recent years. Whether the product packaging is surplus or not is not merely demarcated from the gorgeous degree of packaging. This article will analyze the problem of over packaging of products from the following three aspects.

1. Excessive packaging due to excessively high strength of product packaging

The protection function is the most basic function of the package. A commodity must be circulated several times before it can enter a mall or other trading venue and eventually reach consumers. During this period, the packaging strength is required to protect the contents against various external destructive forces in the process of storage, stacking, transportation and handling. In addition to well-known pressure, impact force and vibration force, there are still many relevant factors that need to be considered in the external force that has a great deal of damage to the packaging. The main transport modes (such as automobiles, aircraft, and ships) and stacking modes (such as multiple Layer stacking, cross stacking), environmental factors (such as climate, sanitary environment), biological factors (such as bites and excretion of rodents and insects) and chemical factors (such as salt spray, seawater erosion).

As a packaging designer, before starting the overall design of the package, you should first think about the packaging strength caused by the structure and materials, and ensure the safety of the goods in the circulation process, instead of simply designing the packaging and decoration. However, if the intensity of the packaging is required blindly, without considering the factors of the product itself, it will cause the product packaging strength to be excessive, which will increase the cost of packaging. In today's society, the "cost" as an influential factor affects the nerves of the business, and how to save costs is a problem that designers should carefully consider. Assuming ordinary cotton towels, it has its own pressure and impact resistance. If plastic boxes or even tin boxes are used, they are overpacked with excessively high packaging strength.To increase product quality, improper packaging structures and materials caused by excessive use of excessive packaging strength are particularly prominent in developed countries; The results of the survey show that the overwhelming intensity of packaging in developed countries is more than 20%.

When manufacturing companies enter the fiercely competitive low-profit era, reducing packaging costs has become one of the important sources for companies to gain competitive advantage. To solve the problem of excess design intensity of product packaging, not only can reduce production costs, but also in line with the spirit of resource conservation, environmental protection and reduce waste.

2. Excessive packaging due to the large volume of product packaging

The problem of overpacking due to the excessive volume of product packaging is more common in China. For example, some tea packaging, 2 bags of 15g loaded tea leaves, in a one-foot-see square cardboard box, a refined wooden box, a box of foam plastic, a layer of yellow silk on the plastic, on the silk They are two tin cans that are exquisitely printed and beautifully shaped. The tin cans are opened. Inside are vacuum bags. Inside the bags are tea leaves. This kind of packaging not only causes waste on the material, causes excessive packing strength, but also induces consumers to misuse consumption because the difference between the volume of the outer box and the actual volume of the product is too large. This should be a fraudulent act of packaging.

In order to ensure the safety of small-sized but high-value products, the manufacturer increases the volume of the packaging box without increasing the cost of packaging materials, and increases the cushioning materials such as lining structures or sponges, so as to increase the impact resistance and strengthen the resistance. The degree of pressure, so that adequate precautions are necessary. However, with the completion of the transportation of goods and their consumption, packaging will gradually lose its various functions, and most of the packaging will become waste and become the main source of pollution to the environment. This situation is even worse for those products that are not of high value but are large in size. According to statistics, the amount of packaging waste in China constitutes more than 30% of urban waste. In a megacity like Shanghai, the annual cost of packaging waste is as high as more than 1 billion yuan.

Excessive packaging volume has caused a lot of waste of resources. At the same time, it has also deceived consumers, especially the local specialty products sold at some tourist attractions. The oversize and false packaging has reached a point of almost crazy, and it has now attracted the attention of the community. In the European Union, Japan, South Korea and other countries, relevant laws and regulations clearly stipulate product packaging: the packaging volume of goods cannot exceed 30% of the goods, and the interval between goods cannot exceed 1cm. Violators are package frauds and consumers have the right to claim from companies.

3 due to improper selection of product packaging materials and produce excess packaging

The selection of product packaging materials needs to take into account three aspects:

(1) It must be ensured that after the products being packaged go through all aspects of circulation and sales, the quality of the products can reach the consumers in the end;
(2) must meet the requirements of packaging costs must be economically feasible;
(3) Take into account the economic interests of manufacturers, transportation sales departments and consumers.

In addition to these three aspects, consideration should also be given to the adaptation of packaging materials to the conditions of circulation (climatic conditions, mode of transport, scope of transport and circulation period). At the same time, packaging materials should also ensure that the contents can be effectively extended shelf life and promote sales. The type, nature, and value of packaging are different, and the packaging materials used are also very different. Individual production companies, regardless of the value and nature of the contents, use relatively high-grade packaging materials to make packaging to increase the added value of the goods. The fineness of the packaging affects the psychology of consumers and makes consumers think that fine products are good things. This is a deformed development. It is precisely because the packaging has promotional functions, beautification, and can induce consumers to generate consumer desire and other factors, so some companies not only reduce the cost of packaging materials, but increase the level of packaging materials to increase sales profits; and businesses will also increase production The transfer of cost to consumers has increased the burden on consumers, and the appearance of buying goods is actually a drawback of buying packaging.

According to the regulations formulated by the China Packaging Federation Design Committee for excellent packaging design evaluation, the material cost of gift packaging accounts for less than 30% of the production cost of the product, and the material cost for low-grade or ordinary packaging accounts for 3% of the production cost of the product. Within this, this ratio also indicates the basic basis for "overpacking." As a country with a large population, China’s resource shortage is becoming increasingly serious. Blindly pursuing high-cost packaging materials will only cause a lot of waste of resources and will not meet the requirements of the sustainable development of the national economy.

4 Conclusion

To sum up three points, a simple analysis of the domestic oversupply problem. Due to the late start of modern packaging design in our country, the relevant laws and regulations have not been formulated sufficiently, and some cases that do not meet the development laws of the market economy have emerged. In order to make our country's packaging international, standardized, and scientific as soon as possible, we must have an overall development plan and perfect relevant laws and regulations to establish the correct direction of development for modern packaging design. Now, some countries, such as Australia and Japan, actively carry out the campaign to simplify packaging, save resources, and protect the environment. We call on businesses and consumers to work together to reduce unnecessary packaging and minimize packaging. Advocating recycling economy, waste utilization, which is based on the principle of “reducing, reusing, and recycling” as the core, the principle of “reducing, reusing, and recycling” and the concept of sustainable economic growth. Mass consumption, a large number of discarded" fundamental changes in the traditional model. Only by insisting on the combination of the role of the market economy mechanism with the government's macro-control, the combination of legal management and policy incentives, government promotion and social participation, and the development of circular economy as the main body can we fundamentally prevent the overpackaging problem in the packaging industry.

Source: China Packaging News