Whether due to genuine concern for the environment or the widespread vilification of plastic among consumers, many companies have invested heavily in reducing their use of plastic packaging. Unilever, for instance, has pledged to halve its use of non-recycled plastic by 2025, while British supermarket chain Tesco launched a sustainable packaging initiative to reduce its annual packaging footprint by 1.5 billion pieces of plastic. And these efforts may indeed have a positive environmental impact. But another trend that’s grown out of the anti-plastic movement is a lot less positive: overpackaging. More and more brands have begun adding superfluous paper packaging on top of plastic packaging in order to make their products look more environmentally friendly, without actually reducing plastic waste.
For example, skincare brand Nivea sells plastic bottles of body lotion packaged in cardboard boxes, even though a similar product from the same brand is available in just the plastic bottle. Similarly, Sensodyne toothpaste is commonly sold in plastic tubes that come inside additional paper packaging, although it can also be sold without the paper boxes. This sort of overpackaging is everywhere, across product categories and geographic markets, despite being both more expensive to manufacture and worse for the environment.
The good news is, overpackaging isn’t the only way to signal sustainability and attract environmentally conscious consumers. In our studies, we found that instead of additional paper packaging, simply adding a “minimal packaging” sticker to plastic packaging could correct the misperception that overpackaged products are more sustainable. Especially for products for which plastic is necessary to ensure safe transportation and lengthen shelf life, this kind of explicit messaging can help reduce consumers’ biases against the responsible use of plastic packaging (without the need for unnecessary paper waste).
This kind of messaging is effective because alongside the common perception that “plastic is evil,” consumers today are increasingly aware of the importance of minimal packaging as a goal in and of itself.
