International Environment Day takes place for the 42nd time on 5 June. According to the German Packaging Institute (Deutsches Verpackungsinstitut e. V.), sustainable environmental and climate protection requires above all a circular economy - and transparent life cycle assessments.
This year's International Environment Day is being held under the motto "No to disposable plastic - yes to reusable!". In the opinion of the German Packaging Institute (dvi), however, it is stumbling into an ideological trap and does the environment a disservice.
Environment Day picks up on current topic
According to the industry network, sustainable environmental and climate protection requires above all Circular economy - and transparent life cycle assessments. This is the only way to objectively determine the environmental footprint of different types of packaging and avoid making the wrong decisions.
"We are delighted that this year's International Environment Day is addressing an important and topical issue, but we would have liked the discussion to be approached without blinkers and prejudices." Kim ChengManaging Director of the German Packaging Institute e. V.
"Disposable is not always bad and reusable is not always good. We can't make it that easy for ourselves if we want to take climate and environmental protection seriously," says Cheng. The dvi Managing Director emphasises that the main thing is to "make the to keep the materials used in the cycle. Reusable solutions can often be advantageous and there are already many clever solutions. However, it is not automatically clear whether and what ecological benefits reusable packaging brings. This is because reusable packaging has to be transported and cleaned after use. This requires energy, water and possibly chemicals. Depending on how great this effort is, a reusable variant may or may not pay off ecologically. The decision should be based on an objective and transparent life cycle assessment."
Dangerous simplification
The criticism of the dvi The motto of this year's Environment Day "No to disposable plastic - yes to reusable!" is therefore a "dangerous oversimplification". Cheng: "On the one hand, reducing the topic to a single material does not do justice to the issue if we want to act comprehensively and sustainably. And disposable packaging is also completely independent of the material if it is disposed of and recycled correctly, not a dead end. On the contrary, your material is reused several times through recycling and becomes the starting point for new products. The decisive factor is that packaging is not thrown away carelessly after use, but deliberately - in the bins provided for this purpose, from the yellow bag to the waste paper bin to the glass container."
The role of industry
Cheng believes that the industry's main task is to drive forward climate and environmental protection with innovations and clever solutions. "Precisely because we cannot do without packaging in the vast majority of cases, we must handle it particularly responsibly," says the dvi Managing Director. For the 7th Packaging Day on 10 June 2021, the German Packaging Institute is therefore presenting Examples of state-of-the-art packaging solutions. In addition, experts from five trade associations answer packaging questions from citizens on social media under the hashtag #Verpackung answered.
Source: dvi
