video reflection a

   

Giving packaging a new life

How its made: Packaging

 It is fascinating to see packaging design (an area that is often overlooked) play such a large part in the fast moving consumer goods area. Online video sharing websites such as youtube and vimeo allow a designer to quickly research and somewhat understand complex manufacturing processes. There are several important factors and principals that the packaging manufacturing industry runs on – economy, efficiency, speed, discard reduction and recycling.

I was amazed at the amount of technology and resources that are required for the manufacture of tetra pacs, I think they are one of the most technologically advanced forms of packaging on the market. Tetra pacs are used to package many liquid food products ranging from smoothies to fine wines.  This packaging uses all of the material properties of all of its layers to produce a product that will not leak/waterproof (aluminium and the Low-Density Poly ethylene), its malleable (due to the thin laminations of the materials), can be printed on (raw paper) and is highly recyclable as a result of the adhesive between the laminations.  I am amazed at the fact that tetra pacs where introduced to the consumer market in the 1950s, it is not only a consumer package it is an entire use and reuse system that has been carefully planned and executed is all of its stages.

Another type of packaging that was intriguing were blown glass bottles. Before seeing this video I was certain that glass packaging, apart from its aesthetic qualities, there was no real reason as to why it was used over blow molded or injection molded bottles, it is heavier and has a very high package to product ratio, meaning that the package used to hold the product is relatively heavy. However after watching the videos I learnt that glass uses less energy than aluminium cans during its recycling process and also it can be recycled as pre consumer waste up to six times.

The one thing that all of the manufacturing processes had in common were the technologically advanced monitoring systems that were utilised for quality assurance and to spot defects. I found it interesting that some plants and processes require both human and machine checking systems at different sections of the cycle.

Take home messages

The packaging industry runs on the following principals: economy, efficiency, discard reduction, and recycling.

Although glass is has a higher package weight to product ratio, it requires less energy to recycle compared to aluminium cans.

Energy can be reclaimed from the methane gases that land fills create.