Ecodesign in Plastics: Guides and Tools
Welcome to the BPF's Eco-Design Zone
Learn everything you need to know to create sustainable plastic products, from designing recyclable packaging, incorporating recycled content in new products, to working with the plastics supply chain to produce innovative, sustainable products.
NEW: BPF RAM Tool
The free BPF Recycling Allocation Methodology (RAM) tool helps BPF members calculate and report recycled content in plastic products. Designed to support your sustainability goals and ensure compliance with UK regulations, RAM offers a clear, standardised method for allocating recycled material across your operations.
Get started today — explore the BPF RAM tool and simplify your recycled content reporting
Sustainable Plastic Packaging Design
Plastic packaging has the ability to protect foods, liquids and other content from an external atmosphere, preserving and protecting goods during transport, storage and use. The wide variery of formats that plastic makes possible, plus its main properties of being hygenic, light weight, durable, and recyclable, make plastic often the best material for the job.
However, it is critical that plastic packaging exists within a system that minimises impacts on the environment. This means reducing the amount of resources required, extending the life of these resource, and minimising external environmental emissions to land, sea and air. To help do so, sustainable design (eco-design) is a field that looks at the design of products and systems to achieve these aims.
Sustainable plastic packaging design is a subset of sustainable design, that looks at the tools and techniques available to create plastic packaging in the most sustainable ways available.
What exactly is sustainable packaging design?
In practice, sustainable packaging design often means designing for one or more of the following:
- Ease of recyclability
- Resource efficiency
- Inclusion of recycled content
- Reuse
- Environmentally beneficial consumer behaviour (e.g. portion control)
Who is involved in the design of plastic packaging?
The design of a new plastic packaging item may involve multiple organisations.
It can involve brands, manufacturers, retailers, design consultancies, all working together feeding in at different stages of the proces, to create the final design.
With distinct prioirities, it’s important these teams and individuals collaborate to prioritise sustainability